ANN ARBOR—It’s 10 p.m., and you’ve finally relaxed into your favorite comfy chair to browse the day’s newspaper. Patting your shirt pockets you realize there’s a problem, and now you’re not relaxed anymore. You can’t find your reading glasses. Again!

Presbyopia” the inability to focus on close objects resulting in blurred vision” affects 100 percent of people by age 50. Historically, laser correction of the intraocular lens for presbyopia has been proposed, but it is risky because there is no way to monitor the procedure” no way for ophthalmologists to see what they are doing to the lens being cut.

But a tool developed at the University of Michigan allows for a potentially noninvasive, painless fix to presbyopia using tiny bubbles that help ophthalmologists reshape the eye’s lens and restore its flexibility and focusing ability. Matthew O’Donnell, professor and chair of the U-M Department of Biomedical Research, along with Kyle Hollman, assistant research scientist and adjunct lecturer, and graduate student Todd Erpelding, developed the method. Recently, it was successful when tested in pig lenses.

Presbyopia usually starts around age 40, O