This is future technology that is getting best of the new generations – Bionic Eye for the blind.
We talk about computing world like the popular smartphones and tablet pc, discovery of the ninth planet, breakthrough of medical science, and the world is getting smaller everyday. Then comes Bionic Eye for permanent blindness is just another range of discovery as we move forward to the future.
Our eyes is the window of our soul. This is the most accurate description of our eyes that shows direct connection with our soul. Without our eyes our soul will regret the outside world. We are living in a sensitive world and our eyes perceived what is happening. When we feel something imminent, our eyes became investigative as we try to look forward. Our soul uses our eyes as our weapon against from harm and dangerous zone. Even in court, a star witness of a crime relates of what he saw through step by step testimony.
Without our eyes we cannot see the beauty surrounding the world we live. You are living in black and white ugly world and nothing else. That is something difficult to live a normal life. People see you as unfortunate individuals that life is partially no direction and disable. We are in pain witnessing the beautiful world after we have been born but yet as we get older we cannot see them anymore permanently because of the disease or accident that damages our eyes permanently. Others have no eyes at all after moving out from their mother’s womb. And we have to say that life is unfair.
Eye Disease Perennial Problem
One of the leading causes for eye blindness in the new generations is called retinitis pigmentosa – a leading form of hereditary blindness that affects 1 in 3000 peoples in the United States of America. The eye disease slowly eats away rods and cones of retina which are the photoreceptors of light, colors and details. Once they were gone as we go with age a person will suffer permanent blindness.
A person named Elias Konstantopoulos, an electrician who grew up in Greece and stayed in the United States noticed his vision getting poorer at the age of 43. He don’t mind it by just using eyeglasses and found he could see things clearly. But later, he visited a doctor for claiming he could no longer see his outstretched arms from the corners of his eyes. His peripheral vision is slowly deteriorating. Ten years later, he could find it difficult to see things surrounds him and could stop from working.
physorg.com
When asked about his situation, he answered “You lose your sight, you pretty much lose everything.” Now at the age of 72, he completely suffered permanent blindness that lost his vision 5 years ago.
Elias became part of a three-year trial of futuristic technology for eye restoring vision for the blinds.
That is how terrible when a person suffered permanent blindness. All you could do is remembering the days when you are still in contact with the outside world. The day when you can see normally meeting friends in the hallway and talking about things to get done. The privilege living in this world has been stolen from thieve of the night that unexpectedly came into your life which is called retinitis pigmentosa.
Getting Best On Discovery
Science is vent on discovery when permanent blindness sees light at the end of the tunnel. After many years of study in a growing field known as neuromodulation that helps people regain their lost abilities such as sight, hearing and movement by stimulating the brain, spinal cord or nerves, Bionic Eye introduction became explosive as ever.
The retinal prosthesis follows the same process in cochlear implants that hundreds of thousands deaf people able to hear again. There are two process involves. First, it will undergo surgical procedure in which a microchip implanted in the eyes. Second, a not so ordinary eye glasses will be an added tool used for picking up images.
How Is This Possible
The tiny video camera embedded in eye glasses used to pick up images as it passes along the way. Those pick up images will then be converted into electrical signals as it will be absorbed to an electrode array that was surgically implanted in the person’s eyes. The process will form into visual signals that are sent to the optic nerve and then forwarded to the brain. The person at the end will see flashes of light and blurry shapes.
According to Gislin Dagnelie, an ophthalmologist who is working with blind patients at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, “It is still a very crude level of vision but the beginning of an improvement.” Before there was 16 electrodes was introduced but now it has 60 total electrodes implanted in the eyes. More introductions of electrodes are getting closer for capturing images in perfect and real thing.
The Race Is On
Getting Best of Bionic Eye is not just the invention of Second Sight which has its own powerful device called Argus II. Some companies are working on similar devices like Bionic Vision Australia, Germany’s Retina Implant AG, and Japan’s Visual Prosthesis. They are focusing on the damage retina due to macular degeneration that causes permanent blindness.
The competition appears promising way to restore vision, and it seems working towards blind-free society.
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