Human Clinical Trials on World’s First Vision Restoration Device
Blindness, the state of being unable to see due to damage to optical nerve caused injury or a disease. Partial blindness has limited vision while with complete blindness one can’t see anything. The major causes of blindness are accidents, injuries, macular degeneration, diabetes etc.,
As per the WHO statistics, throughout the world approximately 285 million people are visually impaired of which 39 million are blind. People more than 50 years are 82% of all blind.
In an attempt to restore the vision to the blind, the researchers at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia worked over a period of 10 years on revolutionary cortical vision device and designed first of its kind device working the combine effects of smart phone style electronics and brain implanted micro electrodes. The device was successfully tested its function experimentally in sheep and planning for the testing in humans as well.
Through Monash University’s Cortical Frontiers project, researchers have developed miniaturized, wireless electronic implants that sit on the surface of the brain and signals being transmitted from the retina to the ‘vision center’ of the brain, thus have the capacity to restore vision.
The device is with custom-designed headgear fitted with a camera and wireless transmitter, a vision processor unit and software, and a set of 9×9mm tiles that are implanted into the brain. The scene captured by the video camera in the headgear will be sent to the vision processor, similar in size to a smartphone where it will be processed to extract the most useful information. The processed data will be transmitted wirelessly to complex circuitry within each implanted tile; this will convert the data into a pattern of electrical pulses, which will stimulate the brain via hair-thin microelectrodes.
