Free Republic

A Minnesota man saw his wife for the first time in 10 years— and most of his grandchildren for the first time ever— after receiving a bionic eye at the Mayo Clinic earlier this month, ValleyNewsLive.com reported. Allen Zderad, 68, has retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative, genetic eye disease that affects the part of the retina that translates light into sight. The condition progressively stole the Forest Lake man’s vision over the course of his life. Zderad uses a cane to walk and has leaned on his wife, Carmen Zderad, as his sighted guide since losing his ability to see. “Ten...

Researchers at Bionic Vision Australia (BVA) have produced a prototype version of a bionic eye implant that could be ready to start restoring rudimentary vision to blind people as soon as 2013. The system consists of a pair of glasses with a camera built in, a processor that fits in your pocket, and an ocular implant that sits against the retina at the back of the eye and electronically stimulates the retinal neurons that send visual information to the brain. The resulting visual picture is blocky and low-res at this point, but the technology is bound to improve, and even...

A bionic eye implant that could help restore the sight of millions of blind people could be available to patients within two years. US researchers have been given the go-ahead to implant the prototype device in 50 to 75 patients. The Argus II system uses a spectacle-mounted camera to feed visual information to electrodes in the eye. Patients who tested less-advanced versions of the retinal implant were able to see light, shapes and movement. "What we are trying to do is take real-time images from a camera and convert them into tiny electrical pulses that would jump-start the otherwise...

A silicon chip that faithfully mimics the neural circuitry of a real retina could lead to better bionic eyes for those with vision loss, researchers claim. About 700,000 people in the developed world are diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration each year, and 1.5 million people worldwide suffer from a disease called retinitis pigmentosa. In both of these diseases, retinal cells, which convert light into nerve impulses at the back of the eye, gradually die. Most artificial retinas connect an external camera to an implant behind the eye via a computer (see 'Bionic' eye may help reverse blindness). The new silicon...