An article published by the IMechE (www.imeche.org) says engineers have created a high-resolution retinal prosthesis that could one day be used to restore the sight of blind people.

Built from nano-wires and wireless electronics, the prosthesis works by restoring the ability of neurons in the retina to respond to light.

A team of engineers at the University of California San Diego and start-up company Nanovision Biosciences successfully tested this response to light in a rat retina, using a prototype of the device in vitro (placed outside the rat’s body).

The researchers say the technology could help tens of millions of people world-wide suffering from incurable diseases that affect their eyesight, including macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa and loss of vision due to diabetes.


While there have been advances in the development of retinal prostheses in the last two decades, the performance of devices to help the blind regain functional vision is still “severely limited” — and well under the threshold of 20/200 that defines legal blindness.

The new prosthesis relies on two technologies: arrays of silicon nano-wires that simultaneously sense light and electrically stimulate the retina to respond to it; and a wireless device that can transmit power and data to the nano-wires over the same wireless link (at what the researchers claim is “record speed and energy efficiency”).

Unlike current retinal prostheses, the prototype doesn’t use a vision sensor outside the eye to capture an image and transform it into signals, which then stimulate the retinal neurons.

Instead, the silicon nano-wires mimic the retina’s light-sensing cones and rods to directly stimulate retinal cells.