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The Blind Shall See Again, But When?

Posted by timothy on from the better-repaint-their-room dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Restoring hearing with cochlea implants that replace the inner ear with an electronic version has become standard procedure for many types of deafness. Now it looks like the same thing might happen for many types of blindness. With five national labs funded by the Department of Energy, this third-generation artificial retina promises to enable the blind to see again soon. Already it has been successful in over a dozen test patients, but at resolutions too low for doing much more than proving the concept. However, if the DoE can perfect this larger version of an artificial retina, then the company Second Sight promises to commercialize the implant, aiming for VGA resolution within the decade."

4 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. nevermind the blind -- bring on the androids by caffeinemessiah · · Score: 5, Interesting
    If they achieve VGA resolution, it's a steady road to full vision for the blind. I'm more interested in, at this point, exceeding human abilities. Think of the case of HDR imaging -- we currently don't have monitors (most of us at least) that are high dynamic range themselves, so images have to be "tone-mapped" to the dynamic range of our monitors, which often results in those ridiculously sharp but somewhat "unrealistic" pictures you see on Flickr.

    It would be cool if, say, the IR spectrum or just more dynamic range in the visible spectrum could be tone-mapped to human perception in this way, resulting in perceptually sharper images by way of a direct retinal implant.

    --
    An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
  2. For the visually-impaired computer user... by Tubal-Cain · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Try working on a VGA/DVI/HDMI/DisplayPort/whatever input, too. Bypass monitors altogether.

  3. Optical nerve still needed. by St.Creed · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This reminds me of a small girl we met at the swimmingpool (lessons), who had one visible cochlear implant. This girl turned out to be deaf from birth on both ears. I remarked to her mother that she could actually hear and talk amazingly well - I hadn't noticed anything in her speech. According to the doctors this was nigh impossible, but she had enough input from the 16 nerves to get perfect speech and reasonable hearing. She probably got very lucky with the connections on the nerves. So even with 16 nerves stimulated this could make a huge difference for someone who's blind, if they happen to hit the right connections.

    Yeah I know - anecdotal evidence and such. Still, I'm happy they get this far already.

    Oh, and I won't be upgrading my retina unless it matches the resolution of my computer display and comes with infrared, zoom and millimeterwave vision options. Preferably with scrolling 6502 assembly code on the left side as well :P

    --
    Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
  4. URL Shorteners by emkyooess · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Can we not use bit.ly and other URL shorteners on /.? There's no need to. They're harmful, actually. Thanks!