When I was an undergrad at UC Irvine, I spent about a year and a half in a neuro-opthalmology lab. In the lab I worked on two major initiatives, one of which was computer aided color-blindness therapy.

Color-blindness is when the eye lacks a certain type of photoreceptor. Roughly 5-7% of men lack either the red or green photoreceptor, causing these colors to be more difficult to distinguish. The gist of the research we worked on was building the groundwork for assistive devices for the color-blind, by using software to manipulate an image’s colorspace. Features in the resulting image would be easier to distinguish, although the image might appear a bit funky.

We ran dozens of tests on the software, comparing results against traditional color tests like HRR and ishihara. Doing the research was a blast and one of my favorite memories of undergrad. One of the hopes was that – one day – someone would use this software in an augmented reality (AR) product. AR was still pretty much a sci-fi pipedream back in 2004, the idea that you could overlay information in realtime on top of reality. Well, fast forward to 2010, and someone’s done it! Of course, the author likely didn’t use the results of our research (some logistics and dropped balls out of my control prevented us from publishing in anything other than posters), but it’s great to see this come to life! Try it out – the app is called DanKam on the App store. It’s still rough around the edges UI-wise, but definitely a good first go at a solution.