Bionic Eye: Restoring Visions

An Iconic Innovation Restoring Vision.

Eyesight is one of the most important senses of humans. 80% of what we perceive comes through our sense of sight. this enables a human to look around the world, the beauty of the earth, faces of our loved ones, Many of the movements we perform, tasks we complete, and personal interactions we make rely on vision in some way.

Have you ever imagine a life without vision. Huuuuuh! feels horrific! There are millions of people who face the loss of their eyesight from degenerative eye diseases. The genetic disorder retinitis pigmentosa alone affects 1 in 4,000 people worldwide.

The field of Technology is expanding gradually. Today, there is technology available to offer partial eyesight to people with blindness or low vision. Researchers around the world have been working to cure this with various bionic solutions.

Image from Particle

Researchers from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia have built a bionic eye that promises to bring back vision with the help of a brain implant. The team claims this is the world’s first bionic eye. The objective of BIONIC EYE is the same as to restore the visual signal to those suffering from an eye disease such as retinitis pigmentosa, low vision, and blindness. It works by bypassing damaged optic nerves to transmit signals from the retina to the brain's vision center.

HOW BIONIC EYE WORKS?

It’s an artificial eye that provides visual sensations to the brain. This system is quite simple. The user would have to wear a custom-designed headgear that has the camera and a wireless transmitter installed inside the human brain. A set of 9-millimeter tiles are implanted in the brain that receives the signals from the previous receiver.  here, Electronic systems have image sensors, microprocessors, receivers, radio transmitters, and retinal chips. It consists of a computer chip that is kept in the back of the affected person’s eye and linked with a mini video camera built into glasses that they wear. Then, the camera's image is focused on the chip, which converts it into an electronic signal that the brain can interpret. The images produced by the Bionic eye are not too perfect but they could be clear enough to recognize. The implant bypasses the diseased cells in the retina and goes through the remaining possible cells.

Image from Circuit Digest

Researchers are looking to advance their system to help people with untreatable neurological conditions like limb paralysis, quadriplegia, to help make their lives better. In the future, we can increase higher numbers of electrodes that are capable of producing sharper, colored, and more functional vision for people who are blind from retinitis pigmentosa and other retinal diseases, including macular degeneration.

Researchers have seen successful results in sheep with minimal side effects where it was safely implanted into their brains using a pneumatic inserter with a total of 2,00 hours of simulation. They are now preparing to take it to the next level for its first-ever human clinical trial, which is expected to be conducted in Melbourne.

Soon in the near future, we will be going to see this technology restoring the vision of millions and billions of people and helping them in living a life full of colors and pictures we daily see.