Bionic Eye
In 2012, electrodes will bring eyesight to the blind.The device comes from Second Sight Medical Products. After 13 years of product development, the company's Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System is now hitting the market. In 2011 the company won regulatory approval in Europe [PDF], and eye surgeons there are just beginning to perform the implants. This year the Los Angeles–based company hopes to get approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as well.
- The process that allows the blind to see starts with a pair of sunglasses, which sport a tiny video camera mounted in the bridge just above the nose. The camera captures an image and sends it down a wire to a visual processing unit hanging on the patient's belt. That VPU—which is a little larger than a smartphone—converts the world's complexities into a 60-pixel image in black and white, which it sends back to transponders on the glasses. From there the image goes wirelessly to antennas wrapped around the sides of the eyeballs, and from there to the 60-electrode arrays that are tacked to the delicate retinas.
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