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Implant Gives Grayscale Vision To the Blind Using Lasers
MrSeb writes with a bit from Extreme Tech: "After a lot of theorizing, posturing, and non-human trials, it looks like bionic eye implants are finally hitting the market — first in Europe, and hopefully soon in the U.S. These implants can restore sight to completely blind patients — though only if the blindness is caused by a faulty retina, as in macular degeneration (which millions of old people suffer from), diabetic retinopathy, or other degenerative eye diseases. ... The Bio-Retina, developed by Nano Retina, is a whole lot more exciting. The Bio-Retina costs ... around the $60,000 [and] the 576-pixel vision-restoring sensor is actually placed inside the eye, on top of the retina. The operation only takes 30 minutes and can be performed under local anesthetic. Once installed, 576 electrodes on the back of the sensor implant themselves into your optic nerve. The best bit, though, is how the the sensor is powered: The Bio-Retina system comes with a standard pair of corrective lenses that are modified so that they can fire a near-infrared laser beam through your iris to the sensor at the back of your eye. On the sensor there is a photovoltaic cell that produces up to three milliwatts — not a lot, but more than enough."
we can finally have sharks with frickin laser beams coming out of their eyes.
This is super cool, if it works, but I'll shit golden sunshine before I let someone near my eyeball with a knife!
they will be driving cars and running over people just like the rest of us in no time
"The Bio-Retina system comes with a standard pair of corrective lenses that are modified so that they can fire a near-infrared laser beam through your iris to the sensor at the back of your eye. On the sensor there is a photovoltaic cell that produces up to three milliwatts — not a lot, but more than enough.""
Dr. Evil: "Oh FFS...the laser goes OUT of the eye, not INTO it!"
I think I'll wait for the high res apple version with retina display ;) The resolution on these bad boys blows.
(disclaimer, I hate apple but couldn't help myself).
said the blind man as he picked up his hammer and saw.
I'm always happy for research done to improve mobility and functioning for disabled people. Not enough is done to help those who are vision, mobility, or hearing impaired. That said... be really careful out there. There's way too many people who are scared by anyone who looks different. Steve Mann was recently attacked for having a digital eye prothetic by employees of a McDonald's. There didn't appear to be any motive for the assault other than a fear of his prothetics. His family was with him at the time.
I've heard similar reports of people being attacked who have brain implants to deliver electrical stimulation due to epilepsy, depression, etc. If it's visible, sooner or later some stupid neanderthal bastard's going to attack you for it. I personally think it should be a hate crime to attack a disabled (or 'augmented') person... but it's still more science fiction than science fact to our legislators to consider, I think.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
...get you a beat-down in a French McDonalds?
Every year, a new version will come out with less invasive surgery, better resolution, color... night mode... I hope they make these things somewhat easy to upgrade. Just imagining being able to switch visible spectrum has me wanting the future version for myself.
My mom is (was) a fine artist, and has macular degeneration. Is is almost completely blind in one eye, and half blind in the other.
It is my wish that IPS treatments for macular repair become a reality before she dies of old age, as it is something I would really like to get for her.
I'm not knocking the progress on this optical implant, but it only does greyscale and without serious microsurgery, will never stop being greyscale only. She needs full color to regain what she lost.
When they can regenerate damaged retinal tissue, I'm flying mom to Europe.
Is that 24p, or only 24i?
They claim a 24x24 pixel image. The video shows a low-resolution grey scale video of a kid on a swing. Looks fantastic if you consider going from blind to THAT. However I paused a frame and the kids head was 12 pixels wide. So the overall image is probably at least 120 to 240 wide - many times higher resolution than the device actually produces. So the video is not actually representative. With further advancements one can hope (expect?) that the resolution will increase over the years. Gives new meaning to "retina display".
Some day, these will evolve into incredible resolutions and better sharpness and viewing angles technically possible with analog eyes. Add some good interfaces for displaying synthetic signals without cameras, and you'll have the perfect monitor. I think I saw the research for this stuff in late 90's, so turning research into mass-market products seems to have at least a decade of delay. The current research stuff being direct brain implants not only for eyesight, but sending and reading nerve signals directly to/from the brain means we'll all be bionic cyborgs within a couple of decades, if we can afford it.
So wonderful! My grandfather went blind towards the end of his life, or nearly so. Having sight again would have been something he dearly would have liked for reading. I hope this continues to advance and quickly for all those who are sight impaired.
Do not point laser in to remaing eye.
Yet another piece of technology from the Star Trek:TNG show that is now coming from SciFi into reality.
Is just *why* the blind are using lasers!
Why is it that most of the people that I encounter seem to have been shat from the Sphincter of Mediocrity?
Never mind the parts that the author did not feel were important enough to mention:
1) the lasers
2) The power source for the lasers
Last I checked, standard corrective lenses didn't have anything batteries, electronics, or even the raw materials to make power sources or electronics.
They are just regular sharks. Well, apart from the friggin lasers on top of their heads!
...There didn't appear to be any motive for the assault other than a fear of his prothetics...
The apparent motive was that they didn't want to be filmed and were trying to confiscate his camera. Of course many business establishments have a policy against taking pictures or video (under the guise of security and patron/employee privacy, but more likely to avoid any bad publicity).
Unfortunatly, these folks were likely not well trained on how to handle this and as a result even worse publicity will result from this incident.
That doesn't make this event a hate crime against people with prosthetics, though...
My policy: you should be careful not to cry wolf when there isn't really a wolf, because when the wolf comes (and they aways do), people might have already written you off.
Eyes ain't the only thing being replaced by tech
A buddy of mine is a type 1 diabetic; he was simply born with a faulty pancreas. For the majority of his life, he dealt with constant insulin injections, as typical for a diabetic. A few years back however, he was upgraded to an external pump. It looks just like an old beeper, and plugs into a semi-permanent* injection point under his shirt. Whenever he eats, he just has to push a few buttons on the pump and it steadily drips the correct amount of insulin into his blood stream
Of course, a pancreas isn't nearly as complex as an eye, so I'm glad to see science and medicine marching onward. Given that these advancements have happened in just a few short years, has me excited to see what will happen in this field within the next decade or so.
*semi-permanent: He stab himself once every few days, and there's a whole bracketing system roughly the size of a silver dollar that glues onto his skin and keeps the needle/tubing at the correct depth.
This signature is false.
too late we have a few brain pacemakers to treat drugs resistant epilepsy
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
If their power comes from a photovoltaic chip on corrective lenses, does that mean that you're going to wake-up blind every morning?
I'm hoping not only that resolution improves (and color, naturally), but why stop there? I wouldn't mind being able to see in UV bands and a telescopic lens would be nice.
Europeans shall play guinea pig for Americans.
The Bio-Retina system comes with a standard pair of corrective lenses that are modified so that they can fire a near-infrared laser beam through your iris to the sensor at the back of your eye.
From the subject, you obviously know where I'm going with this...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
A resolution of 576 pixels is better than nothing, but I'm going to wait for a Retina display.
Careful to not take that into McDonalds.
There is one thing I'm sure of: if it is covered under ObamaCare (or any insurance), the cost of this technology will go up over time, not down.
Since it's 576 lines, it must be PAL, which means she's seeing stuff happen with a speedup of about 4.271%.
Give it a few weeks and she'll know the lottery numbers before they're drawn.
A quick WikiP search indicated the latest evidence for effectiveness against cataracts of N-acc drops was not real solid (see 2008 Royal College of Opthalmologists statement), the the Wiki article also indicates subsequent evidence is available, but doesn't give a cite. As someone who's developing corneal opacities, I'm interested, can you give a cite or two? Tnx.
My blind colleague would just like to read the article without it blowing up his text-to-speech software!
do you think the thugs on the corner are scared of blind granny? not at all
but: do you think the thugs on the corner might be scared of granny with terminator style cybernetic laser eyeballs? she just has to learn how to say "hasta la vista, baby" or "i'll be back", the thugs will scatter in the wind
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This should put an end to that silly notion that half an eye is NBG.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye
Did anyone else get flashbacks to the fake commercials in RoboCop when they watched the video. Well, any of the 5 people who watched the vid anyway.
Why do they get this stuff before we do in the US, with our world-beating health care system?
Maybe there wouldn't be enough profit for insurance companies if we had it here...
Thought not.
n/t
Often it is the FDA approval process
I'm reading this through my occasional early-morning fuzzies caused by my date with destiny: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuchs'_dystrophy Could be worse, but my perspective is biaseed.
I made a bet with a co-worker back in 2004 that bionic implants would be available in the next ten years. Although, five dollars isn't what it used to be...
Why are you so obsessed with getting Slashdot's approval?
Why was violence used? A McD manager getting into a scuffle backed by two of his employees? Was it that hard to explain the circumstances to the customer and sort things out in a straightforward manner? Was it that hard to employ context and reasoning to the situation and realize that the customer was no threat at all? Just how low an IQ is the manager supposed to have?
No, you forgot the "coincidence" of the "cultural" bit which "enriches" most of western Europe, that part of "might makes right" is likely more than a little important in considering why violence was used and why people (including their "peers") hate them and will eventually find themselves forced to respond in kind.
Happy 21st century!
this is not goatse.
First post FTW!