Bionic eye restores sight to the blind

[The Mad Monk]

February 17, 2007
Bionic eye restores sight to the blind
Mark Henderson, Science Editor, in San Francisco

A bionic eye that can restore sight to the blind should be available commercially within two years, scientists behind the revolutionary technology announced yesterday.

The artificial retina has been cleared by US regulators to begin trials on between 50 and 75 people suffering from two of the most common causes of blindness, opening the way for millions more to benefit from similar implants in the future.

If the research progresses well, a device could be on the market early in 2009 at a likely cost of about £15,000, said Mark Humayun, Professor of Ophthalmology at the Doheny Eye Institute, part of the University of Southern California.

An early version of the prosthetic retina has already been fitted to six patients with retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative and incurable eye condition that affects 1 in 3,500 people. All have recovered the ability to detect light and motion, and even to make out large letters and to distinguish between objects such as a cup, a knife and a plate.

The second-generation device that is now starting trials should provide even better vision, as it contains 60 light-sensitive electrodes, compared with 16 in the previous model.

More improvements are expected within five to seven years with a 1000-electrode implant that will enable previously blind people to recognise faces, Professor Humayun said.

“The ultimate aim is to allow people recognise faces, and to allow the completely blind to get around on their own,” he told the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in San Francisco. “The first phase began in 2002, and the results were not what we expected: we thought they would only see light and dark, but they have done far better than that.

“They can differentiate between a cup, a plate and a knife. They can see motion. They can avoid stumbling around into large objects. That is just with 16 electrodes, and we’re now going up to 60. The models suggest 1,000 will be enough for face recognition, and we hope to get there in five to seven years.”

The bionic eye consists of three elements. First, a miniature camera worn in a pair of dark glasses, which transmits images to a radio receiver implanted near the patient’s eye.

This then sends a signal on to a tiny silicon and platinum chip, about 4mm square, that sits on the retina. The chip’s electrodes stimulate the ganglion cells that transmit visual information to the optic nerve and onwards to the brain, which can then construct a visual image.

“A plate is seen as a saucer of light, and a knife as a runway of light,” Professor Humayun said. “It works by building up images like a dot-matrix printer, or pixels on a computer screen.” The implant is suitable for people who are blind because they have lost the photoreceptor cells known as rods and cones that respond to light — the electrodes effectively provide artificial replacements. This includes those with macular degeneration — the most common cause of blindness, which affects up to 15 per cent of over-75s.

The technology cannot restore sight to patients who are blind because of severe optic nerve damage, such as that caused by glaucoma, or because of a stroke.

Professor Humayun said that it would also work better for people who have been able to see as older children or adults, than for those who have been blind since birth.

It generally takes patients a month or two to get used to the Argus device, before their brains learn to interpret the images. While the operation to install it took seven hours originally, it now takes 90 minutes.

In the first phase of the trials, patients were able to use the implant in the laboratory only. For the past year they have also been allowed to try it at home. “Perhaps what we’re most excited about in this next study is we will be able to test the new device with patients at their homes, churches, schools and similar locations,” Professor Humayun said.

The trials will be conducted at five centres in the US, on patients over 50. The US Food and Drug Administration has insisted on older subjects as they have less to lose if the experiments go wrong.

Thousands of people have already volunteered.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle1398491.ece

What would it be like, for someone who has never seen before, who couldn't really understand what it is to see, to suddenly be able to see?

We may soon know.

[SlowwHand]

Fantastic news.

[Solly]

They may be able to lead themselves in future.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Duhnanananananana!

[DRoseDARs]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Duhnanananananana!

That was the Batman and Robin theme.

[Imran Siddiqui]

No, that's more like:

Da na na na na na BAT MAN!

Get it right

[Kuciwalker]

[DRoseDARs]

[Gatekeeper]

Great news. I hope everything pans out for the scientists and recipients involved. The next step, of course, is to bypass the optic nerve entirely and beam the information directly into the brain.

Gatekeeper

[Nubclear]

Isn't there some condition where a person is unable to consciously "see" things, but their brain continues to process the information being recieved from the eyes and thus they operate as if they can see?

[The Mad Monk]

Tacc: no idea.

Gatekeeper: Just one step closer to a Ghost In The Shell style cyberbrain!

[snoopy369]

Geordi

[Tattila the Hun]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

That guy was evolving somewhat bilogically, I seem to recall.

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
Tacc: no idea.

Gatekeeper: Just one step closer to a Ghost In The Shell style cyberbrain!

I'm all for hawt para-military females in skimpy outfits.

[Kuciwalker]

That guy was evolving somewhat bilogically, I seem to recall.

Yeah, but it's a good picture of teh shiny.

[Provost Harrison]

Very fetching

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Tacc
Isn't there some condition where a person is unable to consciously "see" things, but their brain continues to process the information being recieved from the eyes and thus they operate as if they can see?

Yep, there is.
A phenomenon called Blindsight.
The person think it is blind (and is for most means),
If you ask him/her about the object in her blind field of view (often the blindness is onnly onesided) he/she will answer that he/she doesn´t see them.
But if you for example ask him//her to grab or touch a certain object wihthin the blind field of view, he/she will correctly do so (and will be unable to explain how he/she has done it).

The problem very pßrobably stems from a severation of neural connections to the visual association cortex, thus making the person unable to, as you already said, consciously see objects. But as the connections between the visual system and other parts of the brain (for example the motor cortex) are still intact, the person is still able to perform certain task that require visual input, as if she isn´t blind.


Oh and for the Thread Tpic:
Cyber Eyes

[Provost Harrison]

If I get such an implant, I want lasers fitted in mine...

[Proteus_MST]

And show everyone that you are special?

Na, I rather want mine to look like normal eyes but fitted with certain additions not visible to the outer side, like several modes of vision (IR, low light, UV and polarization of light at least) and maybe a smartgun link, making a targeting cross appear in my field of vision as soon as I take any weapon equipped for this in my hands.

[Provost Harrison]

Powerful lasers, enough to vapourise people if they annoy me...

[Proteus_MST]

O.K., that would make sense.

Although it is a pity, that this would only work outside of the internet. Looks to me like the internet would make a more target rich environment for the laser

[Provost Harrison]

Yeah, wouldn't that be great, I could fire them into the monitor and they would come back out at the correct monitor. Alas all that would really happen is I'd blow up my monitor

[RGBVideo]

pretty much everything in humans can be artificially produced except nerve cells with enough $$$. this isn't exactly breaking news.

[The Mad Monk]

Yes it is.

[BlackCat]

Wonder why they want to test it in churches.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by VJ
pretty much everything in humans can be artificially produced except nerve cells with enough $$$. this isn't exactly breaking news.

They can, too,
but not with todays technology

The problem with the retina is, that you need milions of sensors on a very small surface to replicate the human retina and have to take care that they stimulate the right parts of the optic nerve.
So even an artificial retina that allows blind people to recognize faces is a great archivement.

[Odin]

How long before certain crazies start calling curing blindness "cultural genocide of the blind culture"? I rember some identity politics nuts going batsh*t over cochlear implants for the deaf for that reason.

[RGBVideo]

is a great archivement

sure it is

my point is that it was predictable, inevitable. Just like 1GHz PC's were known to be inevitable in the early 80s for those who didn't lack vision (not talking about the literal one now, mind you).

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by VJ
pretty much everything in humans can be artificially produced except nerve cells with enough $$$. this isn't exactly breaking news.

You're very wrong.

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Odin
How long before certain crazies start calling curing blindness "cultural genocide of the blind culture"? I rember some identity politics nuts going batsh*t over cochlear implants for the deaf for that reason.

Pretty fast I guess. I wouldn't mind doing some on those that tries to prevent those hearing implants .

[RGBVideo]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
You're very wrong.

and you are a worthless teenager parasite who doesn't know jack **** about anything outside your very narrow living environment paid and upkept by your daddy but insists on pretending to be an expert on everything -- but we all knew that already, didn't we?

hint: "can" does not equal "has been"