Retinal Implants Help Blind See Shapes

Scientists have developed an ocular implant that has enabled three blind patients to see shapes and objects in the few days of treatment in a trial and indicates that the device can become routine for certain forms of blindness within five years.
Experts described the study results as phenomenal and said the device, developed by German researchers, could ultimately change the lives of up to 200,000 people worldwide suffer from blindness due to a degenerative disease eye condition known as retinitis pigmentosa -. The device is known as subretinal implants - located beneath the retina and acts directly replacing the light receptors that are lost as a result of the disease.
After the step of detecting light, it uses the eye's natural image-processing functions to produce a visual image stable. Eberhart Zrenner, president of the University Eye Hospital Tuebingen in Germany and director of a small company called Retinal Implant AG, which developed the device, said test results were proof "of concept and will now take d Further tests in about 25 to 50 patients in Europe.
"We have shown that people can provide a fairly useful in everyday life," he said in a telephone interview. According to a study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Journal, one of the blank of a patient implanted device has been able to identify and find items on the table before him, and was able to walk around the room so independent.
You could even read a clock and differentiate between the seven tones of gray, the researchers said. The tests were performed seven to nine days after the device was implanted.
Implantation of the device, which fits perfectly inside the eye is a small disc, whose size is only 3 mm square and 10 mm thick, which is about 1,500 light sensors connected to a small amplifier and electrodes.
Other types of retinal implants, known as epiretinal implants that sit outside the retina, and because they can bypass the structures intact sensitive to light in the eyes they need the patient to wear an external camera and processing unit.
Robert MacLaren, a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Oxford, UK and a consultant retinal surgeon at the Oxford Eye Hospital, who was not involved in this trial, said he was "very excited" by Zrenner results.