Posted on 02/16/2007 3:23:11 AM PST by Jedi Master Pikachu
| A bionic eye implant that could help restore the sight of millions of blind people could be available to patients within two years. US researchers have been given the go-ahead to implant the prototype device in 50 to 75 patients. The Argus II system uses a spectacle-mounted camera to feed visual information to electrodes in the eye.
Patients who tested less-advanced versions of the retinal implant were able to see light, shapes and movement. "What we are trying to do is take real-time images from a camera and convert them into tiny electrical pulses that would jump-start the otherwise blind eye and allow patients to see," said Professor Mark Humayan from the University of California. Wireless vision Retinal implants are able to partially able to restore the vision of people with particular forms of blindness caused by diseases such as macular degeneration or retinitis pigmentosa. About 1.5 million people worldwide have retinitis pigmentosa, and one in 10 people over the age of 55 have age-related macular degeneration. Both diseases cause the retinal cells which process light at the back of the eye to gradually die. The new devices work by implanting an array of tiny electrodes into the back of the retina. A camera is used to capture pictures, and a processing unit, about the size of a small handheld computer and worn on a belt, converts the visual information into electrical signals.
These are then wirelessly sent to a receiver just under the surface of the skin, which in turn feeds them to the electrodes. The whole process happens in real time. Growing dots First-generation, low-resolution devices have already been fitted to six patients. "The longest device has been in for five years," said Professor Humayan. "It's amazing, even with 16 pixels, or electrodes, how much our first six subjects have been able to do." Terry Byland, 58, from California was fitted with an implant in 2004 after going blind with retinitis pigmentosa in 1993. "At the beginning, it was like seeing assembled dots - now it's much more than that," he said.
"When I am walking along the street I can avoid low-hanging branches - I can see the edges of the branches." Mr Byland is also able to make out other shapes. "I can't recognise faces, but I can see them like a dark shadow," he said. Brain change The new implant has a higher resolution than the earlier devices, with 60 electrodes. It is also a lot smaller, about one square millimetre, which reduces the amount of surgery that needs to be done to implant the device. The technology has now been given the go-ahead by the US Food and Drug Administration to be used in an exploratory patient trial. This will take place at five centres across America over two years, with 50-75 patients aged over 50.
If successful, the device could be commercialised soon after, costing around $30,000 (£15,000). Other devices could then be developed with higher resolution or a wider field of view, said Professor Humayan. Future work includes studying the effects the implants have on the brain. "We are actually studying what happens to the visual cortex over time," said Professor Humayan. The research was presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in San Francisco, US.
By Jonathan Fildes Science and technology reporter, BBC News, San Francisco |
Not a problem, if I apologized for every time I made a typo I be spending twice as much time posting. ;-D
"peep-peep-peep-peep-peep-peep-peep-peep-peep-peep-peep-peep-peep-peep-peep-peep."
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On the other hand, there is a prophecy known among Orthodox Christians, that in the days of the Antichrist all of Christ's miracles will be reproduced, save that the dead will not be raised. The prophecy does not say the Antichrist will reproduced Christ's miracles, only that they will be reproduced.
I am happy for the blind who will see, but this is the first step in direct digital-brain interfaces (the retina is neurophysiologically part of the brain, and includes not just light sensing cells, but cells that start the image-processing involved in discerning shapes), and after one gets over the 'ooo! cool!' reaction to being able to access the internet through a direct retinal feed, a little more imagination and a little sober thought shows that this will not be a good thing. (If imagination of the consequences fails, I suggest viewing the entire corpus of Ghost in the Shell anime. It just gives a fairly dark vision of a democratic society with pervasive digital-brain interfaces. Consider then a non-democratic society.)
bump
LOL! I can be Mad-Eye Retrokitten!
US researchers have been given the go-ahead to implant the prototype device in 50 to 75 patients. The Argus II system uses a spectacle-mounted camera to feed visual information to electrodes in the eye. Patients who tested less-advanced versions of the retinal implant were able to see light, shapes and movement. "What we are trying to do is take real-time images from a camera and convert them into tiny electrical pulses that would jump-start the otherwise blind eye and allow patients to see," said Professor Mark Humayun from the University of California.
Retinal implants are able to partially restore the vision of people with particular forms of blindness caused by diseases such as macular degeneration or retinitis pigmentosa. About 1.5 million people worldwide have retinitis pigmentosa, and one in 10 people over the age of 55 have age-related macular degeneration. Both diseases cause the retinal cells which process light at the back of the eye to gradually die. The new devices work by implanting an array of tiny electrodes into the back of the retina. A camera is used to capture pictures, and a processing unit, about the size of a small handheld computer and worn on a belt, converts the visual information into electrical signals. These are then sent back to the glasses and wirelessly on to a receiver just under the surface of the front of the eye, which in turn feeds them to the electrodes at the rear. The whole process happens in real time. Growing dots First-generation, low-resolution devices have already been fitted to six patients. "The longest device has been in for five years," said Professor Humayun. "It's amazing, even with 16 pixels, or electrodes, how much our first six subjects have been able to do." Terry Byland, 58, from California was fitted with an implant in 2004 after going blind with retinitis pigmentosa in 1993. "At the beginning, it was like seeing assembled dots - now it's much more than that," he said. "When I am walking along the street I can avoid low-hanging branches - I can see the edges of the branches." Mr Byland is also able to make out other shapes. "I can't recognise faces, but I can see them like a dark shadow," he said. Brain change The new implant has a higher resolution than the earlier devices, with 60 electrodes. It is also a lot smaller, about one square millimetre, which reduces the amount of surgery that needs to be done to implant the device. The technology has now been given the go-ahead by the US Food and Drug Administration to be used in an exploratory patient trial. This will take place at five centres across America over two years, with 50-75 patients aged over 50. If successful, the device could be commercialised soon after, costing around $30,000 (£15,000). Other devices could then be developed with higher resolution or a wider field of view, said Professor Humayun. Future work includes studying the effects the implants have on the brain. "We are actually studying what happens to the visual cortex over time," said Professor Humayun. The research was presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in San Francisco, US. |
You might have missed the earlier ping, and normally wouldn't ping again, but shouldn't this article be pinged to your pinglist?
Well, I would hope that they look ahead... If they looked backwards, all they would see (in most cases) is grey matter...
Well, the rest of the world would be driving cars and we wouldn't.
Of course, this would solve our so-called Oil Addiction... So, there's an up side to everything I guess.
(We'd also be hurting some on the physics side but just the loss of the automobile would be pretty hard.)
Oh, and antibiotics...And manned space flight/satellites in orbit...
The USA has nothing to be ashamed of in the inventions/achievements department. But... We didn't invent everthing. There are a lot of bright people doing things all over the place.
The big market in these things isn't going to be the blind- it will be sighted people.
As soon as the bugs are worked out and the resolution is high enough it would be an excellent way to connect two people (or two million) and let the audience see 'what I see'. All you need is a transmitter/receiver like a mobile phone has and you can receive what your friend is looking at or send the friend what you're looking at. Also, you could simply send your imagery (or your visual life as it happens) to a hard drive for storage of everything you see. That last will evolve into directors making feature length visuals as an art medium (would give a whole new meaning to war/porn movies).
The military will get their hands on it first I reckon but civilians will have their day in the sun too. At some point nothing important will go unnoticed- if I witness it, the whole world will witness it. It will change the way we deal with murder and other crime. It will change politics, geopolitical conflict... Everything.
bookmark for later
You will absolutely see the things I described happen (assuming you don't pass away too soon).
If I had to choose between the two, I'd take sight over hearing any day. I wouldn't take invasive surgery for a hearing device that connected me to my friends when a phone works just as well. But the ability to send/receive exact visuals to/from self/others would be an awesome thing.
Also, partial blockage of vision by the gizmo will be worked around. They'll splice/jack the feed straight into the optical nerve behind the retina at some point. It's going to happen. Completely obvious in my opinion. The good thing here is, it's going to happen soon. I should see this in my lifetime.
Humanity will be profoundly changed. It will be interesting and frightening for those of us who were born before these things but for those born in that time they won't think twice about it.
Instead of replacing our biological eyes with improved digital eyes, it would be better to simply add the digital eyes externally. My choice would be to mount them on the ends of two steerable "bunny ear" masts, which would in turn be mounted over the ears. By having an extra (better) set of eyes mounted on the end of these steerable "eyestalks", the wearer could see in all directions, around corners, or quadroscopically. Later, when digital ears are produced, these too could be stalk-mounted, giving the wearer a 360° sight and sound experience.
For a normally sighted person this would be a luxury device that they could cut on and off (and see as normal when it wasn't in use). You could easily use computer programs with the device as well to create a visual overlay onto your own field of vision. For example, targeting devices could be displayed directly onto your vision without blocking what you were looking at. You could switch to infrared if you needed to. But you could immediately switch from that to a book you're reading (but the words could be scrolled on a screen that was projected onto your vision). Or a music video/movie. You could stop reading and immediately receive incoming visuals from your children/lover/friends etc (complete with sound via a cochlear implant ;-).
The cool thing is not so much the digital/optical feed but the ability to interface computers to the brain... Just a rough estimate assuming 10 million bits are flowing through your optical nerves right now- that's what- just over a megabyte of bandwidth straight into the brain? Not too shabby. A lot of computer/internet things could be made redundant and one megabyte would offer a really good effect. And that's just through the optical nerve. One step further has them plugging straight into the brain. The multiverse is the limit after that.
I would like to have some gadgets like you're talking about as well. They would fit into my structure as well.
These stories seem to be coming out in clusters http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1785339/posts
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