Slashdot Mirror
Patients get Solar Implants in Eyes
Ben Sullivan writes "As reported at Science Blog, ophthalmologists have implanted Artificial Silicon Retina microchips in the eyes of five patients to treat vision loss caused by retinitis pigmentosa. The implant is a 2mm chip that contains about 5,000 microscopic solar cells that convert light into electrical impulses. Already some patients have experienced improvements such as not bumping into objects around the house, and being able to read the time on a clock."
Not a Steve Austin thing, yet, but with people in my family who can't see a hand in front of their faces, that rules.
The title made it sound like they were implanting some sort of solar powered device. darn, now i cant make a solar powered joke.
How do the doctors know what kinds of electrical signals the brain needs in order to see what they;re supposed to see?
Also, if they do figure out how to make this like our vision, don't solar cells "see" in higher wavelengths than our eyes do? Wouldn't people not see blue and purple but instead get UV and the like?
-SaNo
Ophthalmologists at Rush University Medical Center implanted Artificial Silicon Retina (ASR) microchips in the eyes of five patients to treat vision loss caused by retinitis pigmentosa (RP). The implant is a silicon microchip 2mm in diameter and one-thousandth of an inch thick, less than the thickness of a human hair. Four patients had surgery Tuesday, January 25. The fifth patient is scheduled for a later date.
Rush principal investigator Dr. John Pollack performed the surgeries with Dr. Kirk Packo, Dr. Pauline Merrill, Dr. Mathew MacCumber, and Dr. Jack Cohen. All are members of Illinois Retina Associates, S.C., a private practice group and are on the Rush faculty. Patients leave the hospital the same day and will be followed for two years as part of the study, and then indefinitely.
The patients were recruited from a pool of about 5,000 applicants.
The implants are designed for people with retinal diseases such as macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa, which cause blindness and vision impairment in about 10 million Americans. More than one million of these people are legally blind.
"As is commonly seen in with retinitis pigmentosa, these patients all have severe narrowing of their visual fields down to a very small central circle, and all patients in the study are legally blind," says Pollack.
The Artificial Silicon RetinaTM (ASR) was invented by Dr. Alan Chow, pediatric ophthalmologist and Rush faculty member, who developed the chip and founded Optobionics, with his brother Vincent, vice president of engineering. Optobionics is located in Naperville, Illinois.
"This is an expansion of the study of the first 10 patients completed in 2002," says study investigator Dr. Kirk Packo, who oversees the three participating sites. The sites are Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Emory University School of Medicine/Atlanta VA Medical Center and Rush.
Pollack says the current protocol has been modified to reduce the likelihood of inadvertant scientific bias. "We operated on the right eye of each of the initial 10 patients. For the next 20 patients we will randomly select which eye will receive the ASR chip. In addition, post-operative vision testers will be masked as to which eye received the ASR chip implant. The current study is being performed at these study centers in order to independently validate previous studies performed by Optobionics."
The first 10 patients all reported some degree of improvement in visual function, says Pollack. "Improvement in visual function was variable and included the ability to read letters, improvement in color vision, and expansion of their visual field. Some patients gained new ability to recognize facial features -- something that they were unable to do before ASR chip implantation. Some patients have experienced improvement in activities of daily living such as improved ambulation-not bumping into objects around the house, and reading the time on a clock."
Still in Phase II clinical trials, Pollack cautions it is still too early to determine what percentage of patients might experience improvement in vision and what resolution capability these patients might eventually have. "Although we hope that all patients receiving the chip will experience some improvement in visual function, we can't say for sure how these patients will respond to this new treatment since this is still an experimental trial. If this study and future studies show safety and efficacy of the chip and it's approved by the FDA, it could be as soon as three to five years that this technology would be available to others."
Surgical Information
The ASR chip contains approximately 5,000 microscopic solar cells that convert light into electrical impulses. The purpose of the chip is to replace damaged photoreceptors, the "light-sensing" cells of the eye, which normally convert light into electrical signals within the retina. Loss of photoreceptor cells occurs in persons with retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and other retinal diseases.
You've described my mornings.
Sounds like we're on the road to the artificial eye one of OSC's characters had in the Ender's Game series. One of its cool features was that you could pull pictures and video off of it, as well as see through it. It was an in-skull camera.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Night vision, anyone?
A)bort, R)etry or S)elf-destruct?
Riddick, you're days are numbered!
Soon, I too will have night-vision.
Bwahahahaha...
Any word yet on those muscular implants?
Direct away from face when opening.
Especially when installed in pairs.
Isn't this what Stevie Wonder has, w/r/t the pigmentosa? Furthermore, I seem to remember them talking about the possibility a couple of years ago that he would be a candidate for something similar, with a microchip.
I'd imagine that his condition has degenerated far too much along to be aided by this, but if I recall correctly, they nonetheless said he might be a candidate for something similar. I don't think they ended up using him, however.
A visor? For peole who can't see WTF?
i wonder what will be first: - a human of whom all parts are subsituted by technology - a robot which will have a real human soul
Retinitis Pigmentosa only affects peripheral and night vision. Which makes the article summary somewhat suspect. Two seconds of google to check up on it, Taco. Another three seconds to actually "being able to reading" the thing to edit it properly. Is this so difficult?
Meine Schwester ist sehr, sehr reizvoll - Nietzsche
When will we get the ability to enhance current senses and strength. This kind of tech is always the most fun.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
TCP/IP into neurostimulation. Preferably allowing two-way communication. Then I can finally assimilate Google.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
I guess it sounds more exciting to call them "solar cells," but obviously they're light sensors. If they were originally developed for use in solar electricity production, that should be in article, not the headline. "Matters for Nerds. Stuff that News!"
The article really doesn't explain why the chips are reffered to as "solar" cell implants. Are these people only going to be able to see light from the sun (I doubt it). I guess they just lacked a better word for the cells, any other suggestions as to why this is?
So my answer is...yes
I'm not a doctor, but I play one in bed.
This development is very very^H^H^H^H^H important. I have been reading the material on this stuff and it looks as if it is possible to give people devoid of sight, some sight back.
THE REAL treasure here is knowing the brain can adapt. Think about it, they were deprived of sight, and then their brain was able to REORGANIZE itself to understand totally FOREIGN signals and use them as input.
It demonstrates how our wetware is more adaptable than any hardware.
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.
I must say it's always gratifying when technology becomes possible that had only been considered "science fiction."
The prop department was all out of hair clips.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The ASR chip contains approximately 5,000 microscopic solar cells that convert light into electrical impulses.
5000 cells, that's an area of 70x70 cells. Is that enough to see with or am I missing something?
-- Cheers!
I can see a future where artificial eyes are even better than the natural ones. Then we could zoom in on objects, have improved filters so we can look at the sun, say, and why not even the ability to see more wavelengths than we can now. Together with brain implnts we can have our builtin camera, and maybe even telepathy. Coolness.
The porn industry has been waiting for this....
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
On friday I'm going in for essentially the same surgery, only instead of inserting a chip, they try to deal with the bad blood vessel. Then, after a week of lying face down, and a month of no flying (which kills my easy work commute and turns it into a 5 hour ordeal), I get to find out how much damage was done to my retinal pigments by the blood that has been pooling there for half a year.
Damage that *used* to be un-repairable. With this technology now deployed there's a good chance it will be routine for people like me in 10-15 years.
And given that the likelyhood of diagnosis in the second (currently good) eye is about 1 in 50 per year from now on, the stats give me 15-25 years before I start worrying about getting an artificial retina.
Hooray for bionics!
So when will we see those eye-chips with laser? I'd buy it.
I can see it now...
Subject: 3nh4nce your v1si\on impl4nts lklkr 23iou
Hi Jan Dopplemeyer,
Our n3w onl1ne pharmac`y has all new optIcal impl4nts to give you b3tter p3rform`4nce.
http://some.crap.site
G.W. Bush read his inaugaration speech with a gaggle of goats eating barley and malt at the local tavern. A mouse steps in to talk to Cheney about poker. We put this line here because we think we can fool your spam filter, unless you use DSPAM.
Wouldnt this create way too much glare while driving, and then wearing sunglasses it seems would neutralize the whole situation. Yes, i understand these people probably cannot drive.
Humanoid robots might also have uses for these artificial silicon retina microchips.
Robots with a sense of vision could use them to acquire humanoid eyeballs.
Artificial General Intelligence is a lot closer than many people realize.
... always exictes me. Technology seems to be on the edge of limitless applications. I'm sure that in fifteen years, there will be new applications for microtechnology that none of us have even though of yet. Sorry for the geek factor here, but can you imagine when human implants and prosthethis reach the level of sophistication depected in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex?
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
some patients have experienced improvements such as not bumping into objects around the house, and being able to read the time on a clock.
/. editors. Maybe it will help them spot duplicate stories better.
I say these should be mandatory for
*ducks*
Not confused enough? http://translate.google.com/translate?u=www.slashdot.jp&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=ja&tl=en
I've read somewhere that our visual input is pretty crappy and our brain learns to tidy the signal a lot. If you have no vision beforehand, 70x70 is a big deal.
Myself, I'll still wait till we get 1MegaPixel versions though.....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
This is great news. I've been following these procedures for quite some time. Retinitis Pigmentosa runs in our family.
One thing to point out is that this disease is a degeneration of the retina. It's called pigmentosa due to the fact that as the retinal cells die, small spots appear on the retina. The degenerations starts on the outside, and moves inward, creating a tunnel-like feeling for the patient.
My uncle had surgery in Cuba (We live in Guatemala, so let's just skip the whole Cuba-American posts) where they operated his retina, and treated it with oxygen and Ozone therapies. This type of operation is not intended to cure it, but to stop it. This was about 5 years ago, and his retinitis pigmentosa has not spread, but it's still a bit early to know for sure.
If you have more questions there is tons of information on the web
--------------------
Arturo Mijangos
FLAMEBAIT
When hooked up to sensors it was realized that the same parts of his brain were stimulated that us sighted folks use to remember things we have seen. So, I imagine that the signals are not FOREIGN to the brain and there isn't much REORGANIZing going on. The "circuitry" is there and can still be used even without the constant stimuli.
Very impressive article. Perhaps helps to explain people can regain some sight with these improvements. Perhaps all one has to do is get a signal there and the brain will take care of the rest.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
...that make me wish I studied life science instead of computer engineering. I'd love to say I contributed to a great advancement like this, and the biomedical field really interests me. In computer architecture if I were to say "I invented a new branch predictor that's 100% accurate and only consumes 20% of the normal die area", about 19/20 people wouldn't know what the hell I was talking about. Are we forever to be unsung heroes? >_>
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
When surgeons re-attach a severed limb they don't worry about getting all the neurons connected correctly. They connect them randomly, and the brain learns the new mapping.
Physically therapy takes care of the learning, but it is a side effect, the brain is good at learning new mappings. The body generally has many more problems making everything work, in ways that are not related to incorrectly attached neurons.
"I see clocks."
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
One of [the] cool features [of a science-fictional eye implant that this product resembles] was that you could pull pictures and video off of it, as well as see through it. It was an in-skull camera.
Watch people with implants be banned from entering movie theaters.
AHHH the sun's in my eyes!!!
Finally hope for serial masturbators everywhere.
M$ share prices rose dramatically today as news of a potentially new market opening up. It turns out that M$, whose IP patents cover the automated downloading of information directly to the brain, has already put in place technology to automate image downloading through retinal implants. Users must purchase a subsciption to use the service, but M$ spokesperson was quoted as saying "Our intent is not to capitalize on the misfortunes of individuals, but rather to put in place the technology to enable users to get the most out of offered services such as sight"
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
Is solar powered brain for idiot people
Care to volunteer?
--Residential Interior Design
http://www.ultrapro.ro/magazin/AfiseazaProdus.jsp? pr_id=14022&NewGrid2Page=2
In tandem with this research there has also been progress made in retinal transplants using stem cell growth mediums to allow the cells to function normally.
Just for the sake of curiousity, are these adult stem cells or fetal stem cells they're working with? You know, that being one of the hot-button targets in stem cell research...
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I didn't have anything to do with the implant itself, but I have one of them at home that failed QC - looking at it under a magnifier is amazing. "A friend" made the tool that inserts this implant. It looks like a fat pen with a needle at the end, and the needle ends in a tiny "shovel". The implant is held on the tool by a tiny sheet of plastic over the shovel. There is a little wire that runs inside the needle, and when a trigger is depressed, it slides out the end of the needle, and pushes the implant out onto the retina. Then the tip is discarded, and a new tip with an implant pre-loaded onto the "shovel" is attached to do the other eye. There was a lot of micro-machining and laser welding of amazingly small parts going on!
You're referring to Amblyopia, commonly called "lazy eye." I had a friend in kindergarten who suffered from it. Luckily, they detected it early enough for him to go on the patch, specifically, an eyepatch to force him to use the other eye. Sadly, it is indeed one of those disorders which is not fixable after a certain age.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I am happy to see progress in implant technology.
I wonder when there will be some implants for all the people who have lost their sense of humor...
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
Since reading Otherland a few years back (Tad Williams), I have been very curious about new advances in the neurobiological fields. While Williams was not the first to come up with these kind of ideas, he had definitly changed the path i have chosen for univerity study.
... -, i think people soon will want and have the ability to plug into the net and be _completly_ imersed in the virtual enviroment.
Does anyone recall the experiment that implanted electrodes in the brains of chimps, and they where able to play pong just using thought?
I think that, more than ever before, in the next decade, some of the most life changing science for people with disibilities is going to emerge. not just from the pure medical (and social) reasons - helping the blind, motor disabled
I know this sounds terribly geeky, and anti social, but just imagine what the combination of all these technologies may do, one day, for paraplegic patients, who have very little, or no ability to comunicate with the outside world.
I find my current random tagline at the bottom of the comments a tad bit ironic considering the thread I am in...
"WYSIWYG: What You See Is What You Get."
Can't wait for the military to ask for the Special Forces troops, etc. to give up one good eye for an even "better" one. And better lungs, so that he can go for hours without breathing (makes gas masks less important).
i tpgs/manplus.html
4 /042404.htm
And then, of course, those "lustful urges" will be a distraction and discipline issue, so we'll nip that in the bud...
ManPlus by Fredirik Pohl. Read it.
Here's some background from Google http://www.routledge-ny.com/ref/cyborgcitizen/cyc
A Soldier First. A Soldier Always. The Warrior ethos http://www.tradoc.army.mil/pao/TNSarchives/April0
Unlike some however, I don't see this concept as a completely bad thing. Some people would be quite happy to be part of a cyborg. If it comes about because their physical difficulties were abated, why not offer them more options? If my eyesight is poor, why not give me 20/20, 400X zoom, IR, Xray, UV and starlight vision? And if that makes me a slightly better sniper (just slightly, mind you), so be it.
Richard Priar "I'm black?"
Husband to wife: "Hey you said you were a 5'9" super model"
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
We'd also need to know the size of the chip to figure out the angular resolution which is far more important than the raw 70x70 size.
70x70 that had a large angular span would be very very useful for navigating the world, even if it wouldn't help them read the fine print on the bottom of an auto loan.
70x70 that had a very small angular span would help them read the auto loan but would be absolutely useless for walking out of the house towards the car. Think about it... a blind person's white cane is an extremely high resolution device, but it's angular width is less than 1" at 6 feet.
--Rob
IAAVN (I Am A Visual Neuroscientist) working on artificial vision. I have seen presentations on this approach, and unlike many of the other efforts in this field, Dr. Chow's claims appear astonishingly good.
The basic idea is beautiful and elegant: you put an array of tiny photodiodes behind the retina, exactly where the photoreceptor cells (rods and cones) are. Shining light on each of these nearly-cell-sized photodiodes creates a localized voltage which should stimulate a small handful of cells, generating a signal that will mimic the original biologically transduced input to the retina. The photodiodes nicely supplant the dying photosensitive cells. It sounds perfect.
I was very impressed with their presentation at a one-day symposium on artificial vision I attended at USC a few years ago, until one of the audience members pointed out that they had done some calculations, and it seemed that one would need incredibly high light levels to generate enough current to stimulate the local cells. Dr. Chow admitted that, even being optimistic about the conversion efficiency of photodiodes (which here need to be optimized for biocompatibility more than efficiency), the physics involved dictates that you would need light bright enough to cause damage to even the non-photosensitive tissue to get the device to work. Dr. Chow then backpedaled to say that even if the device cannot restore lost vision, it can perhaps supplant any remaining healty cells to improve vision in low-sighted patients. That question-anwer cycle was the first point in his presentation where he backed off from the claim of restoring full vision to blind patients.
Dr. Chow's results were done in a private laboratory, part of a company set up to profit from his advances. He must answer to his shareholders, and his results are not open to the level of scruitiny that standard scientific claims are. He was reluctant to answer questions at this session. Therefore, as a scientist I am bound by the lack of openness to view his claims with a grain of salt.
Other efforts to create artificial vision are still having trouble with just a handful of points of light. While I believe that the subretinal approach has a good chance of eventually proving fruitful, using a silicon-based device that lacks an external power source just cannot produce normal vision. This is why the article concentrates on the improvements in existing low vision, rather than discussing restoration of lost vision.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
I've always thought that the best analogy for our eyes are two coaxial cameras. A very narrow beam, high resolution camera slightly off the centerline, surrounded by a wide-angle low resolution camera.
Rods, which predominate the wide-angle camera system, are like hyped B&W film... great night sensitivity, but grainy. Cones, which dominate the inner narrow-angle camera system give color vision, but require much higher light levels to operate.
--Rob
I'd be curious if the sensitivity of the surrounding neurons would increase to better sense the impulses generated by the implant. It seems that this would just be a small modification of the neural net...
As such it would seem logical to extrapolate that this approach would be far better with patients who still have low vision rather than no vision because their neural nets already have "the right wiring" so there's only one biological know (the sensitivity) that needs to be tweaked.
--Rob
Coming soon, 2.1 megapixels replacing the 5,000 of yesteryear!
Similar effort by Boston Retina Implants and was covered on slashdot before.
Dude....I'm just guessing but I'm thinking that you'll be making that work commute in your flying car (by Moller of course) before you'll be walking around with that artificial eye......
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
I was not trying to attack your use of stem cells in therapy. I was merely trying to clarify. While I have an opinion, it didn't seem relative to the discussion. And yes, this reply is off-topic, but I wanted to assure you that you were not being attacked, as your post seemed to indicate you thought you were.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
^_^ I'll skip any jokes about how opening the third eye would obviously imply being able to open the second one as well... Heck, that might even be too close to the truth.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
It would be cheaper and simpler!
http://www.solarhealing.com
http://groups.msn.com/SunGazing/messages.msnw
http://theopenline.cc/sun_gazing.htm
You not come here! Illegal! I just do eyes. Just - just eyes. Just genetic design. Just eyes.
There is no reset button in life; however, there are bonus levels.
I guess it was only a matter of time before they were able to decode the electric impulses sent out by eyes and received by the brain...
Once this information in known, they can manipulate it or copy it with artificial means.
I have a friend with RP, and this would really help him...
What I want is a way to
A) do a "shine job" on my eyes so I can better see in the dark
or
B) implant one of these kind of chips to enhance my vision with the UV and IR spectrums...
--E--
My wife has RP and we have been following the development of this prosthetic for years.
My wife however wants to wait until they can make a model with "heat vision" therefore becoming a super-powered cyborg, that can cook a steak just by staring at it.
There are two kinds of fool. One says, This is old, and therefore good. And one says, This is new, and therefore better.
Some of us are from the '60's and have children older than you. The technology discussed in the article was just so much fiction only twenty-five years ago. Many sub 20k Slashdot userids welcome the fact our life expectancy and quality of life has increased significantly due to technology. I first used the internet over a teletype terminal and the six million dollar man was still in production.
LOL! Kids these days
A large computer icon is often 64x64 pixels. You can extract considerable information from that. If you could adjust your grid to view "between" the pixels (squinting, moving your focus slightly, etc) to build a better idea of what was there, you could do even better.
It's should be enough to avoid walking into walls, pick things up more easily, identify colour and light, etc. A heck of a lot better than nothing.
By the way, this has been done for sound for a while now - in fact, I think such hearing aids may be in or near normal clinical use. Visual stimulation like this has been done before too, but I didn't know of anything this self contained or high detail. Wow.
Now that's what I call headlights!
Need to add a barcode on these things so that the retinal scanners will be able to tell the difference between people.
Here's the web page that the people who did the experiment set up.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
What I'm waiting for is arrays of small lenses that are implanted around the eye, say in the skin above the orbital socket. Then have an implanted computer that uses interferometry to combine the images. Want to look at the night sky without heavy binoculars (or maybe even a telescope)? Done. Walking in the dark w/o tripping? Done.
The lense material would have to be really tough, though, so as to prevent scratching or breaking due to accidents and day to day wear. It'd really suck to have to get the lenses replaced because they kept getting scratched by your pillow case at night.
For more details, here's a link to an actual research paper by Chow et all (2004): The Artificial Silicon Retina Microchip for the Treatment of Vision Loss From Retinitis Pigmentosa .
Besides more details, the research paper also includes photos of things like a shot of the artificial retina on top of a penny (it's about as big as Abraham Lincoln's nose), the actual circuitry, and where it gets placed in the back of the eye. It also shows the results of their visual tests on patients with the artificial retina.
I did a lot of research on the Chow team last year. After reading 20+ articles my consensus was that the results were optimistic at best and most likely completely false. I shared this with my advisor and he informed me many people feel the same way.
There is some good work going on in this field, just not necessarily here.
With 5 kids... I sometimes wish I did.
it worked for Vin Diesel in Pitch Black.
unfortunately, those with natural sight may have lost theirs after seeing the film.
I suffer from a mild form of RP (X-Linked for anyone who has read up on the condition) so its with a certain amount of bias that I read such articles. Could anyone guess for what what kind of effect a large EMP would have on these implants? (I know little to nothing about the the implants themselves)
Cuba will rejoin the west when Castro joins Arafat. No, Castro is not in the same league as Arafat, but I don't make the rules.
That's cool, I guess. I'd rather be able to see in sonic or infrared. Where can I get eyes like that?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Yeah, then I could be as clever in real life as in IM sessions:
TOTOsFrnd: Hey, have you seen the new <thing-that-TOTO-has-never-heard-of>?
[GoogleGoogleGoogle]
TOTO: Oh, yeah, man, that's really cool, but the phlognotignomicator interface looks a little clunky.
TOTOsFrnd: Wow, TOTO, you're really awesome and knowledgable.
I though you were either coldcold or TFGeditor who said solar meant no external power source (in this context) Oh well, at least it's nice to know someone else replies to old posts! I thought it might only be me.
It always helps to turn on "Email when one of your posts is replied to." in preferences :-P
My dog's better 'cause he eats Ken-L Ration!