A retinal implant that uses electrodes to stimulate the retinal neurons, receiving images from a camera mounted on glasses.
The concept of retinal implants evokes fantastical concepts such as Deus Ex-like heads-up displays. Before we get there, though, we’d like to be able to give sight to those who are blind or losing their vision. Existing technology provides only limited improvements to vision, such as allowing people to see spots of light or edges with high contrast. To put that in numbers, we can improve someone’s vision to about 20/1,400; the legal definition for blindness is 20/200.
Retinal implants work by directly stimulating cells in the back of the eye with electrical signals, which get transmitted as visual information to the brain. This works because in many cases of blindness, diseases damage the photoreceptor cells but leave the ganglion cells, the neurons that transmit signals to the brain, intact.
Recent research efforts focused on improving the resolution of the device stimulating the retinal cells. However, higher resolution images can only help so much if the signal doesn’t match the patterns that the retinal neurons expect.
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