In a ground-breaking medical advancement this week‚ Patrícia Gonçalves became UKʼs first recipient of an AI-powered laser eye treatment: the procedure took place at Focus Clinics in London
The 31-year old Portuguese student who recently finished her masters at Oxford had struggled with vision problems since childhood (wearing glasses from age-5). Due to severe astigmatism and short-sightedness she couldnt even see the top letter on eye-test charts without glasses
The innovative £6‚500 procedure‚ performed by Dr David Allamby‚ uses an eye-scanning tech called “Eyevatar“ that creates a digital copy of patients eyeballs. The AI system tests about 2‚000 different laser patterns on this digital twin — which helps find the perfect treatment plan; the tech was already tested in China and Australia
Having astigmatism‚ Iʼve never been able to wear contact lenses comfortably
The results were remarkable: her vision improved from worse than 20/200 to 20/16 which is better than standard 20/20 eyesight. Last years clinical study of 200 patients showed that:
- All participants got better-than-20/20 vision after 3 months
- 1 in 12 achieved 20/10 vision - the human eyeʼs maximum capability
- Zero negative outcomes reported
The treatment works by fixing the point spread function (PSF) - how images get distorted on the retina. The digital twin gets virtual operations thousands of times until the smallest possible PSF is achieved: then this optimal pattern is used during actual surgery