Wireless Implants Promise Superior Vision Restoration

ananyo writes, quoting Nature: "The development of retinal implants has been dogged by problems of unwieldiness since the first implantable stimulator for vision restoration was developed in 1968. Now researchers have come up with a solution that overcomes many of the problems by the use of special glasses that fire infrared signals into the eye and onto an implanted array of silicon photodiodes. The system, tested in rats, simplifies what needs to be implanted and both transmits visual data and power directly to the implants, eliminating the need for any bulky external power source (abstract)."

Comments

So... it's a VISOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sign me up!

Re:So... it's a VISOR?

[davester666]

Good thing they included 'vision' in the title.

I was just imagining another kind of wireless implant and how they might alter a persons stature.

Re:So... it's a VISOR?

[mcgrew]

Geordi's visor gives him super vision. This visor doesn't. In fact, your vision will still be far less than a normal person's, but it would be better than total blindness.

I won't be impressed...

[seanzig]

until they make them like Laforge's visor.

Re:I won't be impressed...

[TWX]

I won't be impressed until they give the user the extended frequency possibilities of his visor. But, if one remembers how things looked when they showed his visor input to the bridge crew, it wasn't exactly Vision++...

Re:I won't be impressed...

[amicusNYCL]

...the use of special glasses that fire infrared signals into the eye and onto an implanted array of silicon photodiodes. The system, tested in rats...

I won't be impressed until they show us pictures of rats wearing tiny eyeglasses.

Re:I won't be impressed...

[suutar]

The problem with showing that stuff to the bridge crew is they're only equipped for the normal red-violet range, so anything the visor is detecting has to get mapped into that range, and since most folks can't see IR or UV, nobody worries about glare or reflection in those frequencies (in most cases), so without a lot of practice, a wider range is going to look like crap to a normal viewer. Lots of practice, or using a sliding filter to determine what frequencies you want to see now, should make it more useful.

Re:I won't be impressed...

[ignavus]

...the use of special glasses that fire infrared signals into the eye and onto an implanted array of silicon photodiodes. The system, tested in rats...

I won't be impressed until they show us pictures of rats wearing tiny eyeglasses.

But ... maybe large glasses are fashionable amongst rats, like the 1960s for humans.

Re:I won't be impressed...

[R3d M3rcury]

Uh...here's one.

I gotta admit, that was my first reaction, too. Missed it by that much...

Re:I won't be impressed...

[captjc]

I would rather have Citizen G'Kar's wireless prosthetic eye. Remove from socket, place in a room, walk away. Instant spy camera.

Implanted array of silicon photodiodes

[muon-catalyzed]

Awsome kind of frankenstein technology! But something tells me that regenerative medicine (simply regrow your own retina from your own genetic material) is much better if not the only right research direction to approach here.

Re:Implanted array of silicon photodiodes

[Anonymous Coward]

Short term this is the best you can do. Medium-term regenerative medicine seems better. Long-term implanted devices should surpass biological eyes so you'd want them even if you had normal eyesight. We need this kind of research for both the short term and the long term.

Re:Implanted array of silicon photodiodes

[tomhath]

Regrowing a new retina would be the ultimate, but given that the retina is a huge bundle of nerves I doubt we'll see that anytime soon. This seems to be stimulating existing receptors to give some vision (I assume very bad, but better than nothing).

Re:Implanted array of silicon photodiodes

[companydroid]

Retina or Optic Nerve regeneration would be a big step forward.

Re:Implanted array of silicon photodiodes

[dmbasso]

Interesting fact of the day: the retina is actual brain tissue that during development migrates, forming the optic nerve and back of the eye.

Re:Implanted array of silicon photodiodes

[mark-t]

I agree, but then you can't effectively have superpowers. By augmenting our bodies with synthetic constructs, we can.

Re:Implanted array of silicon photodiodes

[Belial6]

If you can regrow the body part, there shouldn't be any reason that you couldn't regrow it better.

Re:Implanted array of silicon photodiodes

[mcgrew]

Awsome kind of frankenstein technology!

No, Frankenstein made his monster out of human parts. My friend's transplanted corneas and liver are Frankenstein tech, my CrystaLens eye implant is cybernetics, as is this retinal implant.

I agree that being able to grow a new eyeball would be much better than an implant, but the science is nowhere near that far yet. This gives patients at least some sight, and remember, a huge number of people are blind from retinal degeneration, and few with that disease are likely to be going to live long enough for organ regeneration. Most people with that disease are in their seventies or older.

Folks with diabetic retinopathy or other retinal problems younger folks get may have new eyes grown in the future, but this wil hold them over until it's possible.

Re:Implanted array of silicon photodiodes

[mcgrew]

Long-term implanted devices should surpass biological eyes so you'd want them even if you had normal eyesight.

You would have someone sticking needles in your eye if your eye was working fine? I have an implant in my left eye that gives me better than 20/20 at all distances, I'm 60 and don't even need reading glasses, but I wouldn't have had the surgery if all that was wrong with the eye was age-related farsightedness.

All surgery is dangerous. People have died from such minor surgeries as tonsellectomies and hemmoroidectomies.

New eye

[barv]

Of course the problem with implanting a new eye is the connections. But maybe growing the eye in situ, and stimulating neuronal growth into the (growing) retina?

Implanted tech

[girlintraining]

I've already heard of diabetic pumps failing when exposed to airport scanners, and those have less sophisticated electronics. I imagine if these were ever approved, we're going to have a lot of people going blind everytime they fly. The problem with wireless medical technology is part 16 of the FCC rules: It's perfectly legal to overload them with high energy RF, with potentially lethal results.

Re:Implanted tech

[girlintraining]

In regards to people going blind due to interference... they're already blind, so they'd just go back to "normal."

I wonder how well you'd react to having your vision taken from you without warning, while trapped in a plastic tube, in a loud and public environment, surrounded by men with shotguns...

Re:Implanted tech

[profplump]

Since the devices are powered by light, and according to the article are essentially just an array of independent photodiodes, couldn't they just close their eyes to protect the implanted bits and submit the external bits for manual inspection like all other medical devices?

I hate the TSA as much as the next guy, but this seems like a pretty lame excuse.

Glasses

[BradleyUffner]

What I want to know is; how did they get the rats to wear the glasses?

Re:Glasses

[Lord_of_the_nerf]

Put them on a crime scene investigation show and give them snappy one liners.

Works for me

[willworkforbeer]

Implants always cause my vision to suddenly improve.

Re:More control

[dmbasso]

Yeah, reading the summary I instantly remembered Ghost in the Shell - Standalone Complex, where augmented people could easily have their eyes hacked. Too bad it is infrared, imagine the possibilities if it was wifi. :)

Re:More control

[suutar]

the longer the wavelength the harder to focus. That said, if you could use it to see the WAP and had some extra circuitry to flag it if it's unsecured.... :)

Vision signal could be intercepted

[leftie]

One could find out what person wearing the implants was looking at

Re:More control

[dmbasso]

Isn't it the opposite? Like, gamma-rays were thought to be unfocusable until just recently, when they made a sandwich of diffraction patterns achieving an IOR of 1.00000000001, or something like that?

Anyway, I was talking about the communication between the photoreceptor array and the optic nerve link... if you could hijack the wifi link you could do some interesting stuff. With infrared you could still flood the general direction of the eye with your signal, but I bet it would not be too comfortable, neither imperceptible... :p

Re:More control

[Neil Boekend]

You can focus low frequency EM signals, with magnetic lenses, but the signal will diverge from the path. Contrary to popular belief EM signals don't go in a straight line, but "waver": a perfect beam will get wider over a distance. How long you can keep the beam focussed depends on the frequency: low frequency signals get wider fast and high frequency signals stay better on course.
This means a TV signal at 100 Mhz can have a building between the transmitter and the reciever, as long as the distance between the reciever and the building is large enough. The building blocks the signal, but the piece of the signal that goes 1 meter to the side of the building "wavers" over the gap.
Gamma rays are hard to get focussed (untill recently it was thought to be impossible, exept for gravity lensing) but if you manage to get them focussed they will remain so for a long distance (i guess light years)

Please note: to get a perfect beam in the first place you'd need an infinitely big lens. Nobody works with perfect beams, not even laser beams are perfect. They just don't waver noticably in the distance most people use them in (mm in an optical disc player to hundreds of km's in fiber networks) . If you send a signal to the moon this effect will be large.

Re:where's the research

[Neil Boekend]

This code is human specific, wich is one of the troubles in this research.
By the way: experimenting with medicine on imates isn't allowed without their permission (human rights stuff).