Home Diseases and Conditions Myopia and Hyperopia

Myopia and Hyperopia

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Development Stage

Early Stage

Focused ultrasound research is in the laboratory phase and is not yet available for patients.

Clinical Trials

Focused ultrasound for this condition is being researched in clinical trials.

International Approval

Focused ultrasound is approved to treat this condition outside the US. Patients can seek commercial treatment at participating international sites.

FDA Approved

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved focus ultrasound for this condition. Patients can seek commercial treatment at participating sites.

Early Stage

Clinical Trials

International

FDA Approved

Focused ultrasound research for this condition is in the laboratory phase and is not yet available for patients.

Focused Ultrasound Therapy

Focused ultrasound is a noninvasive, therapeutic technology with the potential to improve the quality of life and decrease the cost of care for patients with myopia (nearsightedness) or hyperopia (farsightedness). This novel technology focuses beams of ultrasound energy precisely and accurately on targets deep in the brain without damaging surrounding normal tissue.

How it Works
Where the beams converge, the ultrasound produces neuromodulation of the ocular cortex, potentially enabling myopia and hyperopia to be treated without surgery. While initial work has been accomplished, there is still much to be done before this technology will be widely available.

Advantages
The primary options for treatment of myopia and hyperopia are very limited to external corrections (glasses, contacts or invasive surgical corrections), and this could be a novel solution.

Focused ultrasound can reach the desired target without damaging surrounding tissue and is repeatable, if necessary.

Clinical Trials

At the present time, there are no clinical trials recruiting patients for focused ultrasound treatment of myopia and hyperopia.

The Foundation updates these pages regularly, but with the increasing number of clinical trials, we want to be sure that our audience has the latest information available. Therefore, we also added the website search information for the above trials. If you click here, it will take you to the latest information available from https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/.

Regulatory Approval and Reimbursement 

Focused ultrasound treatment for myopia and hyperopia is not yet approved by regulatory bodies or covered by medical insurance companies.

Notable Papers

Lu G, Qian X, Castillo J, Li R, Jiang L, Lu H, Shung KK, Humayun MS, Thomas BB, Zhou Q. Transcranial Focused Ultrasound for Non-invasive Neuromodulation of the Visual Cortex. IEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control. 2020 Jun 29;PP. doi: 10.1109/TUFFC.2020.3005670.

Gong C, Li R, Lu G, Ji J, Zeng Y, Chen J, Chang C, Zhang J, Xia L, Nair DSR, Thomas BB, Song BJ, Humayun MS, Zhou Q. Non-Invasive Hybrid Ultrasound Stimulation of Visual Cortex In Vivo. Bioengineering (Basel). 2023 May 10;10(5):577. doi: 10.3390/bioengineering10050577. PMID: 37237647 

Badadhe JD, Roh H, Lee BC, Kim JH, Im M. Ultrasound stimulation for non-invasive visual prostheses. Front Cell Neurosci. 2022 Aug 3;16:971148. doi: 10.3389/fncel.2022.971148. eCollection 2022. PMID: 35990889  

Qian X, Lu G, Thomas BB, Li R, Chen X, Shung KK, Humayun M, Zhou Q. Noninvasive Ultrasound Retinal Stimulation for Vision Restoration at High Spatiotemporal Resolution. BME Front. 2022 Feb 21;2022:9829316. doi: 10.34133/2022/9829316. eCollection 2022. PMID: 37850175  

Click here for additional references from PubMed.