You’ve heard of night vision goggles but what if they were contacts?

A new paper came out this week in the journal Cell, called “Near-infrared spatiotemporal color vision in humans enabled by upconversion contact lenses” by researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China. Let me translate that for you.

Just to be clear… We can’t see IR right?

Indeed! Near-infrared (IR) light is invisible to humans without night vision goggles. And when you do use those, light shows up as monochrome green. However, these experimental contact lenses were infused with nanoparticles to make near-IR visible to the human eye. 

How do these lenses work?

Initially, the team made smaller mini mouse contact lenses so they could test this. No kidding, someone’e job was to make mouse contacts. 

The way these work is that nanoparticles are embedded into flexible polymers to make the mini mouse contacts. That’s actually the hardest part, since the lenses need to be transparent, hydrophilic, & compatible with an eye. These nanoparticles were designed to collect photons in the 800-1600 nm range and re-release light in the 400-700 nm range, the range in which our eyes (and mice eyes) can detect light and colors.

To test this, mice were equipped with the lenses and were placed in the open and given a choice of boxes to hide in: one dark box and one lit up with an IR lamp. To those without the contacts both boxes should have looked the same. The mice equipped with IR contact lenses showed a preference for the dark one to hide, as opposed to the control mice.

Did it work well enough to move to humans?

Yes, the team then upscaled the lenses to humans size. Once equipped, subjects in a dark room could see a flickering IT light. Additionally, they could discern blue, green, and red light from different levels of the IR spectrum.

The coolest part about this is that because IR goes through the eyelid more efficiently than visible light does, they could see the flashing lights even when their eyes were closed! (so don’t fall asleep with these contacts in…)

Despite the discovery, I’m assuming these are imperfect?

Of course these are brand new so they have a downside: the image is blurry due to the light-scattering nanoparticles that allow you to see IR. The lenses don’t amplify an image like night-vision goggles do. In this experiment, they only could detect intense IR emitted by LEDs on a specific wavelength, not a spectrum.

Also, they cost $200 per pair to make.

Any future applications?

The team is working on applying this tech to glasses. This helps with less light scattering & less blurriness. Some criticize that the lenses are less useful than night-vision goggles, but they are already way less bulky.

The team suggests this technology could be used to detect anti-counterfeit marks on bills or be used by doctors doing fluorescence surgery, in which they use fluorescence to makrk things like cancer cells.

There are also of course military applications, and the team hopes to eventually leverage this technology to help with color blindness.

The real question is, can these lenses help you see olo?

… no (not yet!)

As covered on the Daily Tech News Show on June 3rd 2025. For a more detailed discussion of the topic, listen here:

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News: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01630-x

Article DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2025.04.019 External Link