An ambitious project funded by the Department of Energy hopes to restore vision to people blinded by diseases that have damaged the retina, such as macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. In these cases, the eye has lost its photoreceptors, which receive images, but it still retains the neural paths that transmit signals to the brain.
An artificial retina would bypass the damage, capturing images and converting them into electrical signals that are passed to the neural cells. Already, six patients have had a prototype implanted, and they were able to differentiate between objects such as cups, knives, and plates.
The artificial retina is the result of a collaboration among the Doheny Eye Institute (DOE) at the University of Southern California, North Carolina State University, Second Sight Medical Products, and the University of California at Santa Cruz. It relies on miniature electronics, advanced processing power, and high-resolution sensors. A tiny camera embedded in a pair of glasses captures an image and sends the data wirelessly to a chip behind the user's ear. The chip converts the data into electronic signals and sends them via wires under the skin to an electrode implant on the retina.
Only partial vision will be possibleenough, perhaps, to read a book or recognize a face. But for many visually impaired people, even this limited achievement would be nothing short of miraculous.