As we age, nearly all of us will lose some ability to read close-up, but there is a new invention smaller than a grain of rice that could be the answer.

A few months ago, Kenneth Vernon couldn't read even the biggest letters without first finding his reading glasses.

"When I'm reading something, I get the glasses out and invariably leave them somewhere else," he said.

The condition is called presbyopia, and even Lasik surgery can't fix it. In fact, there was no way to fix both eyes until now. The actual device is the Presview segments.

North-suburban ophthalmologist Mitchell Jackson is part of a national study that uses the tiny implants, much smaller than a dime, to correct presbyopia.

"There is four of them that go in, and without all four in, you don't get the effect," he said. Normally the eye's muscles bend the eye's lens so it can focus on objects that are close up, but as we age, the lens expands just enough to loosen those muscles around it.

"It can't work to expand or shrink the lenses anymore because there is no space," said the doctor. What the tiny implants do is to stretch the eye enough to pull those muscles tight again.

Vernon had his eyes done in California. he says the results were amazing.

"I don't have to wear glasses to read even small print," Vernon said. "I've got new eyes again."

The goal of the Presview implants, as they're called, is to improve close-up sight by about 85 percent.

So far, there has been no lasting complications, but the implants can't be approved until the study is finished in several years.

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