The Pulse
Rayner’s AI-Designed Galaxy Lens Reaches Utah Patients
Hoopes Vision began implanting Rayner’s AI-designed Galaxy intraocular lens in Utah on October 27, after FDA approval in September. The spiral-optic lens is designed to extend vision across distances, though patient results vary.
AI.info Team · Written with AI · fact-checked ·
“We’re able to fix some of the problems that the old premium lens implants used to have, like glare and halos at night, and put in a lens that’s better at using all the light that comes in the eye,”
Benjamin Buckner, surgeon at Hoopes Vision, speaking to FOX 13 Utah
Hoopes Vision brings the Galaxy lens to Utah
Hoopes Vision in Draper began implanting Rayner’s Galaxy intraocular lens on Tuesday, October 27, giving Utah patients access to a new option for cataract surgery. Buckner was the first surgeon in the Western United States to use the lens, FOX 13 reported. The device had already been used abroad, and the clinic’s Utah procedures followed its U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval on September 24.
One of the first Utah patients was Corey Hansen, owner of Hansen’s Collision Center. He told FOX 13 his eyesight had declined over six or seven years and was interfering with daily activities. He had been scheduled for a conventional lens before Buckner offered him the Galaxy.
The Utah procedures were not the first commercial U.S. use. Tylock Nasser Vision in Texas says its surgeon performed the first commercial Galaxy implant in the country on October 12. Hoopes Vision’s milestone, by contrast, was the lens’s arrival in Utah and the first use by a surgeon in the West.
A spiral optic instead of concentric rings
Rayner says artificial intelligence helped produce the Galaxy’s spiral optic. The lens is non-diffractive: unlike some multifocal designs that use rings or steps to split light into separate focal points, its surface is intended to provide a continuous range of vision. Rayner says the design aims to reduce halos and glare while retaining transmitted light.
The FDA approval covers RayOne Galaxy and RayOne Galaxy Toric for adults whose cataractous lens has been removed. The agency’s record says the Galaxy is intended to improve intermediate and near vision while maintaining distance acuity comparable to a monofocal lens; the Toric version also addresses specified levels of corneal astigmatism. These are implanted lenses, not AI systems that operate inside the eye after surgery.
Rayner says the U.S. approval followed an investigational-device study involving more than 250 patients at 10 U.S. sites. The company described the study’s safety profile as strong and said patient-reported levels of bothersome visual disturbances were low, but its public announcement does not provide percentages for those outcomes.
What the early U.S. rollout does—and doesn’t—show
Rayner says the Galaxy had been implanted more than 200,000 times across 75 countries since its international launch in 2024. Those figures describe its use abroad, not the size of the U.S. clinical study or the experience of the first American patients. In a separate October 26 announcement, Hoopes said three Utah patients were scheduled to receive the lens the following day.
Buckner told FOX 13 that patients should expect improved vision within a week or two, while describing the procedure as taking only a few minutes per eye. That is his estimate, not a guarantee for every patient. The clinic’s announcement also cautions that candidacy depends on the patient and that individual visual outcomes vary.
For Hansen, the lens offered hope of returning to work and activities that had become harder as his sight declined. The Galaxy is now an FDA-approved option for eligible adults having cataract surgery; its long-term record with U.S. patients will depend on outcomes beyond the first procedures in Utah and Texas.