Artificial Eye

[Tuckerfan]

Hope for folks who are going blind.

A camera that transmits pictures into the brain, as this ScienCentral News video explains, is giving some people suffering from blindness the chance at partial eyesight again.

New Vision

Millions of people around the world live in a blurry or darkened world as a result of eye diseases, such as age-related macular degeneration and Retinitis Pigmentosa, which cause damage to the retina at the back of the eye.

Now, Humayun, in collaboration with several national research centers and the U.S. Department of Energy, is developing a type of artificial retina that he hopes could restore some degree of sight to people blinded by the degeneration of retinal cells. “Once the vision is lost and patients can’t see there are very few therapies, if any, that can help restore their lost vision,” says Humayun. “And really it’s the restoration of lost vision that is the goal of this retinal implant.”

[bagger]

With the new bionic, robotic and nano technology coming of age by leaps and bounds it’s only a matter of years when this kind of artificial eye will start to emerge sort of like the face transplant is emerging now.

[Ferret_Herder]

Hmm, that article was from 2005 (date in upper right corner). The idea isn’t new; I wonder if this has had more success than previous attempts to work with similar technology.

Also, I have to emphasize that the eye has to be otherwise intact; there is a chip implanted in the retina that receives light through the otherwise-functioning eye, then transmits to a camera. Their title was rather misleading.