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Betacom, a Mississauga firm's digital breakthrough promises alternative way of seeing for millions of people with
poor vision.
Betacom's VisAble Video Telescope developed in conjunction with the University of Waterloo and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, uses digital technology to enhance sight, with a zoom lens, wide
viewing field and high magnification. Consumers can also increase contrast and sharpen outlines of images. The telescope looks like a small hand-held video recorder and enables people with low vision - a huge and
growing market of some 17 million in North America alone - to walk safely across the street, recognize faces, read food and drug labels, look inside
their refrigerators, and cupboards, and generally carry on a normal life.
Betacom's breakthrough technology was shown in an exhibit
to mark White Cane Week
"When you say low vision, most people don't know what you mean" says Brian McCarthy, President and chief executive
of Mississauga-based Betacom Corp. "But people connect if they've got a mother who has glaucoma or macular degeneration or an uncle with retinitis pigmentosa, a form of tunnel vision"
Form those whose vision is obscured by a
dark blotch, called scotoma- the non-seeing area of a visual field- the video telescope's wide-angle lens enables them to use to the side of the blotch, to recognize the face of a wife or child that had been
obliterated. For additional information please Ask the Doctor.
You can visit the Betacoms Web site.
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