Spreading Light in the Darkness | Bionic Eye

Bionic eyes - A look into the future:

The field of bionics has transformed medicine for centuries, as far back as the ancient Egyptians who created bespoke toes from wood and leather. During the 20th century mechanical and electronic advances made heart pacemakers and more sophisticated prosthetic limbs which had a tendency to feel were also developed.

In 1958 a USF  colonel who was also a doctor coined the term "Bionics". In the same year a 43 year old engineer in Sweden got the first heart pacemaker which was still under testing. He kept felling unconscious and had to be revived 20 to 30 times a day. He lived to the age of 86 years and had 23 pacemakers replaced in his life time.

In 60's, a bionic eye was developed but due to primal tech as compared to modern tech it could not flourish. But now we have miniature wireless and electronic components and tech which can be used easily and in a better way.

Now, researchers are creating bionic eyes to help blind people see again. Neurosurgeon Jeffrey Rosenfeld, director of the Monash institute of medical engineering in Australia, hopes to implant tiny “ceramic micro-electrode tiles” into the brain’s visual cortex of blind volunteers this year – bypassing the normal visual pathway

You don’t even need eyeballs. A digital camera mounted on a pair of glasses captures images which are then processed in a device about the size of a mobile phone. The resulting image is then transferred wirelessly to the tiles in the brain – the more tiles, the more detailed the image.

When we talk about the detail of image, primitive tech involved pictures with like 60 to 80 pixels but now the pixel quantity has improved to 500 to 600 pixels. Naturally our eyes can generate more than a million pixels but 500 to 600 pixels are enough. Trust me, ask blind people if they could just see a vague image, they would do anything, just to even have a glimpse.

Such techniques designed to help people with disabilities could also be adopted by others wanting to enhance their own senses or performance. Though it is difficult to promise that the blind people could see the faces of their loved ones but they can help a blind person understand the dimensions of objects around him and he can easily find his way.

The problems holding back the application of bionic eyes is that the electrodes we have can cause inflammation or some reaction if kept embedded in the brain for a long time as they are normally made of iridium and such metals. And also that it needs more testing on humans though it is being tested on sheep, just to understand how their brain precepts those electric signals.

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