Eye "chip" for the blind

Scientists are developing an implantable eye "chip" to treat some types of blindness within the next ten years. Recently, eye "Chip" is at the center of attention, when media reports that musician Stevie Wonder was considering getting the "eye chip" to restore his sight. "Whether we can do it in two years, I don't know. But if you gave me 10 or 20 years, the answer is I'm certain that it can be done," Dr. Eugene de Juan of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, said.      The researcher explained that the "device works by stimulating a small area of the retina electrically by passing electric current into the eye... kind of like the way a pacemaker would stimulate the heart to beat... The brain then interprets that neural activity of the retina as vision, as light sensation."      He added, "We have significant proof of concept in the sense (of) patients being able to see at least in short periods of time things like letters and forms like boxes... We think that what we have to do now is solve the problem of putting it (in the eye) over a long period of time."      The candidates for the chip include those with diseases of the retina, such as macular degeneration or retinal pigmentosa. At least 2 million people in the US, would be benefit by this technology. Still, many obstacles have to overcome including the development of heat and avoiding damage to the computer chip from salts in the eye fluids. The longest a chip has been implanted in a patient is about 45 minutes to one hour.      "We know at least on a temporary basis that we can stimulate the retina... But we don't know over a long period of time if the amount of energy that will be required...will be able to be tolerated in a patient's eye," de Juan commented at a press conference. One of the concerns is that as we put in more pixels or more energy into the eye that there would be more heat put into the eye. Just like your computer can get hot and even burn you, that's one of the concerns." As the technology gets better there's more efficient use of the electronics so that we have less heat. There've been 17 patients that have been tested with various electrodes, but there's no clinical trials related to the total device. This means that it will take some years of testing before there would be a commercial device that could be implanted in patients.