Bionic Eye Attempts to Restore Vision

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Bionic Vision Australia has developed a Bionic Eye that aims to give people back enough vision so that they can avoid obstacles and regain some of that lost mobility. They also have a second-generation version they are working on which will allow people to recognize faces and even read large print!



Bionic Vision Australia uses an external camera, with resolution of up to 5 megapixels, mounted on a pair of glasses. An electrode array is implanted in the eye and that connects to the central part of the retina where the greatest number of retinal neurons are present. An external unit has vision-processing software to help generate the electrical impulses. The communication between the electrode implant and the external unit is wireless.
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I'm so glad I will be a part the generation that lives to see all the miracles of science coming in the next few years. Immortality fifteen years away baby!
 
piscian18 said:
I'm so glad I will be a part the generation that lives to see all the miracles of science coming in the next few years. Immortality fifteen years away baby!
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Yeah, and I bet "immortality" will cost $7500/mo for as long as you are alive, with a DNA programmed kill switch thrown the moment you're late with a payment. :D
 
I can't be the only one that thought Jordy from Star Trek Next Generation, am I?

Also I didn't know Imortailty was going to be so cheap?

We already have imortality at that price point... But the catch is your a vegitable on a machine stuck in a bed....

I think the high end imortality where you can still be you will come at a much, much higher price...

I'm waiting for some one to figure out how to turn us into vampires or somthing. It would work out perfectly for gaming. :D
 
They need to come out with a version of these that can be attached directly to the brain for people who've lost an eye (and the optic nerve) completely.. Then I would be impressed (since I'm one of those people. :D)
 
flooberjobby said:
I can't be the only one that thought Jordy from Star Trek Next Generation, am I?

Also I didn't know Imortailty was going to be so cheap?

We already have imortality at that price point... But the catch is your a vegitable on a machine stuck in a bed....

I think the high end imortality where you can still be you will come at a much, much higher price...

I'm waiting for some one to figure out how to turn us into vampires or somthing. It would work out perfectly for gaming. :D
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Nope I thought of Jordy too.
 
UrielDagda said:
They need to come out with a version of these that can be attached directly to the brain for people who've lost an eye (and the optic nerve) completely.. Then I would be impressed (since I'm one of those people. :D)
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They've done that too, but these retinal implants are safer and offer the same level of vision as current brain implants do.
 
UrielDagda said:
They need to come out with a version of these that can be attached directly to the brain for people who've lost an eye (and the optic nerve) completely.. Then I would be impressed (since I'm one of those people. :D)
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Hey I also have only sight in one eye. Sure is a bitch to have never seen 3D anything. And it used to be pretty hard to drive when I have no depth perception.

I sometimes miss not being able to ever see out of both like someone with 2 eyes.

Did you ever experience that? Or was your an issue at birth as mine was? :(
 
Gonna show this article to a friend of mine who has the worst luck with vision - literally blind in one eye and almost blind in the other.
 
I also forget to mention that he has to hug his monitor practically to read anything. Maybe this might give him some hope.
 
UrielDagda said:
They need to come out with a version of these that can be attached directly to the brain for people who've lost an eye (and the optic nerve) completely.. Then I would be impressed (since I'm one of those people. :D)
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Unfortunately that's probably still a good ways off. The retina is relatively easy to get at and manipulate; especially at the relatively gross level that they're working at. Sticking electrodes into the brain is much higher risk and would require understanding a good deal about how the brain processes images in order to work.



Reading the article I think a model capable of providing the ability to read at a useful level is still at least 2 versions down the pipeline. The current model only has an ~10x10 grid of pixels (it's not square), and it's planned successor will only be ~30x30. The smallest grid size that can clearly show most characters is 5 pixels tall and with a 3 pixel average width. (A few like M and W will need five, others like i or l only one.) Adding 1px of whitespace between letters we get a 6x4 average character size, or 5 lines of ~8 characters each. For comparison the 32 character 16 line low resolution text display on the trash80 color computer would require ~12k pixels minimum to display. For reference, that's roughly one third of the amount of text on an page of an average paperback.

I'm not saying that lower resolution models will be useless, but while capable of making a masssive improvement in quality of life; even the next generation 1000 pixel model won't be sufficient to allow the ability to function at anything approaching the level of a person with normal vision. To fully restore vision would require an ~50 mega pixel device. Human vision is about 75MP and there's roughly 50% overlap between the eyes.
 
jordan12 said:
Hey I also have only sight in one eye. Sure is a bitch to have never seen 3D anything. And it used to be pretty hard to drive when I have no depth perception.

I sometimes miss not being able to ever see out of both like someone with 2 eyes.

Did you ever experience that? Or was your an issue at birth as mine was? :(
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I lost my sight to retinoblastoma when I was 2.. All I remember of being able to see out of both eyes was looking up at something, the sun got into my eyes and it suddenly felt like I had been stabbed in the face with a dagger... So visually, 3D is just a concept to me.

I never tried to drive, though, I'm so friggen clumsy, I'd be a danger to everybody on the road... Now if only they could come out with a super high resolution bionic eyeball, that'd kick ass. :D
 
DanNeely said:
Unfortunately that's probably still a good ways off. The retina is relatively easy to get at and manipulate; especially at the relatively gross level that they're working at. Sticking electrodes into the brain is much higher risk and would require understanding a good deal about how the brain processes images in order to work.
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Yeah, that's too bad.. I'd probably need some of that immortality to live long enough to see such a device. :D
 
UrielDagda said:
I lost my sight to retinoblastoma when I was 2.. All I remember of being able to see out of both eyes was looking up at something, the sun got into my eyes and it suddenly felt like I had been stabbed in the face with a dagger... So visually, 3D is just a concept to me.

I never tried to drive, though, I'm so friggen clumsy, I'd be a danger to everybody on the road... Now if only they could come out with a super high resolution bionic eyeball, that'd kick ass. :D
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Sounds like we both are simply used to the way things are.

And it is easy to drive now. You get used to judging things correctly fairly easily. Sounds like we both need a Steve Austin Bionic eye. I sure have been dreaming of something like that for years. I don't expect to see anything that will help me in my lifetime..
 
This stuff is pretty cool.

A few months back a company in our building demoed another early attempt to solving this problem: http://www.upmc.com/MediaRelations/...ation-Vision-Restoration-News-Conference.aspx

That company rents space in our building and we got to meet the folks behind the tech as well as the Marine.

Our company and the others in the building are all bio-tech and working on some incredibly cool advances in science.
 
UrielDagda said:
Yeah, and I bet "immortality" will cost $7500/mo for as long as you are alive, with a DNA programmed kill switch thrown the moment you're late with a payment. :D
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Immortality, brought to you by Sony.

"Seriously guys, we really don't install kill switches into out products!"
 
UrielDagda said:
I lost my sight to retinoblastoma when I was 2.. All I remember of being able to see out of both eyes was looking up at something, the sun got into my eyes and it suddenly felt like I had been stabbed in the face with a dagger... So visually, 3D is just a concept to me.

I never tried to drive, though, I'm so friggen clumsy, I'd be a danger to everybody on the road... Now if only they could come out with a super high resolution bionic eyeball, that'd kick ass. :D
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Wow, had Rb myself... along with my son. They had to enucleate my left eye at 4 months old. So I've have zero memory of seeing with both eyes. It's never been a problem for me though. I drive and can perceive depth just fine with the single eye (3d dp is only good out to aboout 20 feet anyway).


As for brain implants, they have them. The last I read on the subject was 2004-2005, but it was very very limited then. The best they could do was restore the sensation of points of light in a person who had lost developed vision. Those who've never had vision are out of luck still.
 
ryan_975 said:
.........................The best they could do was restore the sensation of points of light in a person who had lost developed vision. Those who've never had vision are out of luck still.
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I remember watching/or reading something about a guy who had his vision restored after sooo many years and his brain could not process the images. He would look at something not know what he was looking at. So basically he was a sight seeing blind man.
If you think about it, giving some a new sense when they did not have it would not work so well as the brain would not know how to use or interpret it.
 
the-one1 said:
I remember watching/or reading something about a guy who had his vision restored after sooo many years and his brain could not process the images. He would look at something not know what he was looking at. So basically he was a sight seeing blind man.
If you think about it, giving some a new sense when they did not have it would not work so well as the brain would not know how to use or interpret it.
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If you're thinking of the same story I am he lost his sight as an infant before his brain learned to process images the first time.
 
I remeber seeing something on dateline a long while back about a blind man that was given something like this then allowed to drive a car in a parking lot for the first time. Needless to say i was amazed
 
jordan12 said:
Hey I also have only sight in one eye. Sure is a bitch to have never seen 3D anything. And it used to be pretty hard to drive when I have no depth perception.

I sometimes miss not being able to ever see out of both like someone with 2 eyes.

Did you ever experience that? Or was your an issue at birth as mine was? :(
Click to expand...

Think of it this way. You never need to pay for any of the 3D PC gaming graphics technologies, the necessary video card upgrades needed to support doubling frame rates, nor any of the 3D home theater tech (BD player, 3D capable TV) :D

Between all that, you might save enough for the surgery! Although it would be extremely weird to have like 12x12 resolution in one eye and effective ~4000x2000 res in the other. :p
 
okashira said:
Think of it this way. You never need to pay for any of the 3D PC gaming graphics technologies, the necessary video card upgrades needed to support doubling frame rates, nor any of the 3D home theater tech (BD player, 3D capable TV) :D

Between all that, you might save enough for the surgery! Although it would be extremely weird to have like 12x12 resolution in one eye and effective ~4000x2000 res in the other. :p
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No different than people who have 20-200 in one eye and 20-20 in the other. If the disparity is great enough, your brain actually just starts ignoring the visual input from the weaker eye.
 
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