Abstract
Millions of patients are either slowly losing their vision or are already blind due to retinal degenerative diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and age-related macular degeneration (AMD) or because of accidents or injuries. Employment of artificial means to treat extreme vision impairment has come closer to reality during the past few decades. Currently, many research groups work towards effective solutions to restore a rudimentary sense of vision to the blind. Aside from the efforts being put on replacing damaged parts of the retina by engineered living tissues or microfabricated photoreceptor arrays, implantable electronic microsystems, referred to as visual prostheses, are also sought as promising solutions to restore vision. From a functional point of view, visual prostheses receive image information from the outside world and deliver them to the natural visual system, enabling the subject to receive a meaningful perception of the image. This paper provides an overview of technical design aspects and clinical test results of visual prostheses, highlights past and recent progress in realizing chronic high-resolution visual implants as well as some technical challenges confronted when trying to enhance the functional quality of such devices.
Highlights
Owing to the incredible recent technological progress in the development of tools and devices aiming at interfacing to the nervous system, much research has been conducted over the past few decades to either deepen our understanding of the human neural system, or to interface with the nervous system for prosthetic purposes
In 1929, Foerster, a German neurosurgeon, observed a visual neural response to electrical stimulation, when his patient saw a spot of light during electrical stimulation of his visual cortex.[6]
While all of the approaches on the development of visual prostheses require external image and data processing due to bypassing retinal image analysis, implantable photodiode arrays are intended to replace the function of degenerated photoreceptors by directly translating the image into small electrical stimulations with no need for additional electronic circuitry
Summary
Owing to the incredible recent technological progress in the development of tools and devices aiming at interfacing to the nervous system, much research has been conducted over the past few decades to either deepen our understanding of the human neural system, or to interface with the nervous system for prosthetic purposes. The implant is, a single component in charge of converting incident light to electrical current and delivering the resulting electrical stimuli to the retina.[16] While all of the approaches on the development of visual prostheses require external image and data processing due to bypassing retinal image analysis, implantable photodiode arrays are intended to replace the function of degenerated photoreceptors by directly translating the image into small electrical stimulations with no need for additional electronic circuitry Other advantages of this approach include easy placement, fewer components, and since no video camera.
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