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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."
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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 work on RP. It CAN and DOES cause blindness. Its more of a group of diseases as opposed to one monolithic disease. From emedicine:
52% had 20/40 or better vision in at least one eye, 25% had 20/200 or worse vision, and 0.5% had no light perception
So, in conclusion, don't be a cock. Seriously, tell those people they aren't blind.
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!
My wife has early onset RP and it does far more than affect night vision and peripheral vision - it ultimately causes all vision to be lost, from the outside in. In the past few months my wifes central vision in her right eye has started to fail dramatically.
Normally RP is diagnosed later on in life so the full effects of the disease are not normally experienced, however many suffer from childhood and it is those people that will benefit from this type of technology.
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.
Its nice to see some hope, particularly for my wife who has been told that she would be blind by the time she was ten. That was 23 years ago.
Any word yet on those muscular implants?
I guess so...
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
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
...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? >_>
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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.
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.
Finally hope for serial masturbators everywhere.
Is solar powered brain for idiot people
Care to volunteer?
--Residential Interior Design
Who needs eyes? I navigate by looking into the twists and turns of the future! -KH
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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 would like to chip in on this conversation, as I have RP, as does my father, two of my sisters, and my grandmother (mother of my dad). This disease does indeed have early symptoms, primarily of impaired night vision. Since this has been in our family, we have known about it early and therefore we are very interested as such things as the electron possibility. But these tests have so far had limited results. There is also another solution which helps a little, and that is daily taking Vitamin A Palmitate, at a dosage level of 15,000 IU. Taking this fairly high dosage, the affects of RP have been known to have 20% less impact per year.
These solutions do not truly fix the problem, but hopefully over time a solution will be found. Retinitis Pigmentosa has serious effects, it is quite scary seeing your family members go blind, and knowing you will too.
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786