Hi, all.
Whether the work detailed below has any promise is, in my opinion, a
subject for debate. However, it is interesting and at least is the first
reallly concrete word I've seen on this.
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From: kirk@speech.braille.uwo.ca (Kirk Reiser)
Newsgroups: alt.comp.blind-users
Subject: Computer Eye for them blind!
Date: 13 Oct 1995 12:48:44 GMT
Organization: The University of Western Ontario, London, Ont. Canada
Lines: 76
A friend sent me this article and I thought I might share it with you.
It is a ways off but interesting all the same.
Kirk
From: C-ap@clari.net (AP)
Subject: "Eye-on-a-Chip" Computer for Blind Developed
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -- Researchers have developed a featherweight
computer chip designed to float on the thin, wet tissue of the
retina, where it will send visual signals to the brain and -- its
creators hope -- restore at least partial sight to the blind.
The computer, about the size of the date on a penny, will be
powered by solar cells that will generate electricity when struck
by an invisible laser beam coming from a pair of special eyeglasses
in which the clear lenses have been replaced by two tiny TV
cameras.
If that sounds like something possible only on ``Star Trek,''
Dr. Joseph Rizzo, one of its developers, has a ready answer. He
points to the success of the electronic cochlear implant, which is
now enabling many formerly deaf people to hear.
``Nearly 10 percent of previously deaf patients who receive a
cochlear implant can hold a conversation over a telephone,'' said
Rizzo, a neurologist and ophthalmologist at Harvard Medical School.
The success of the electronic ear gives hope to Rizzo and his
colleagues, who include John Wyatt of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology.
The first eye-on-a-chip has just been completed at a cost of
$500,000, Rizzo said. But mass production of the chips should bring
the cost down to as low as $50 each, Rizzo said.
It is still years away from human trials of the computer. The
researchers plan to put the first chip in a rabbit's eye sometime
in the next year, Rizzo said. He described the work Wednesday at a
seminar sponsored by Research to Prevent Blindness, a New York
voluntary organization that supports eye research.
Dr. Jean Bennett of the Scheie Eye Institute at the University
of Pennsylvania said she was impressed with Rizzo's work.``It's
fascinating,'' she said.
Bennett is also pursuing a forward-looking treatment for
blindness. She is experimenting to perfect a form of gene therapy
that may one day restore vision to people with a genetic
abnormality that causes retinitis pigmentosa.
That condition affects 50,000 to 100,000 Americans, most of whom
begin to lose their vision as adolescents and eventually go blind.
The computer chip is only a stop-gap measure until gene therapy
can reverse the underlying genetic defects in some forms of
blindness, Rizzo said.
Bennett said both approaches are important. ``Some things will
work for some situations, and others won't,'' she said. ``So it's
good to have a bag of tricks.''
Rizzo's chip has two layers: a top layer of solar cells and a
bottom layer of computer circuitry. Protruding from the two layers
is a tiny strip carrying electrodes that send signals directly to
the nerves in the retina, which transmit the signals through the
optic nerve to the brain.
The chip will probably produce only limited vision in a very
narrow visual field, but that could be enough to dramatically
improve the lives of patients who cannot see at all, Rizzo said.
The idea is that the special glasses would pick up images, using
small versions of the optical detectors used in video cameras.
Those images would be converted into high-tech digital semaphore
messages sent by laser beam to the computer inside the eye.
The laser would power the computer -- by striking the solar cells
-- and transmit the visual information from the glasses.
--KirkReiser The Computer Braille Facility e-mail: kirk@braille.uwo.ca University of Western Ontario phone: (519) 661-3061 ------- end of forwarded message -------
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