Giving Second Sight to the blind
April 22nd, 2008 | by rey |Bionic eyes anyone? I wrote a few months back about bionic lenses that have a whole bunch of potential applications chief of those to enhance vision. But what if there was no vision to talk about in the first place? Eye surgeons at Moorfields Eye Hospital in Central London recently implanted an electronic device into the retinal area of two patients, the first ever in England, which allow them to distinguish objects that appear as points of light making up shapes they can hopefully distinguish.
The device works with a tiny camera mounted in a pair of glasses which transmits a wireless signal via a small processor on a belt into a receiver and a panel of electrodes placed in the back of the eye.
Take a look at the figure below for a graphical representation (click on it to get to the source of this news):
Three more patients will undergo the operation as part of an international trial before the technique is evaluated and made available to the general blind public.
This technology has been successfully tested in the US with patients being able to see light, shapes and even movement.
All this is made possible by a retinal implant technology called Argus II which was developed by Second Sight a Los Angeles-based company founded in 1998 with a mission to find ways to treat Retinitis Pigmentosa, a disease characterized by gradually deteriorating vision. Imagine slowly going blind, arrgghh the agony!
This technology gives hope to the millions who live life in total darkness.
We’re just a few steps closer to what Geordi La Forge benefited from in the TNG series:
Based on what I’ve just read, I think we can do a whole lot better than that visor thingy. Don’t you think?
