Second Sight’s Argus II: Allows Braille To Be Streamed Directly Onto Retinas
Baku, November 26 (AZERTAC). Researchers at Second Sight have been working on an optical implant that streams Braille directly onto a person’s retina and allows the person to read the letters and words visually. In what has been described as a medical first, this headset-like device could revolutionize the way in which degenerative eye diseases are treated.
Senior research scientist on the project Thomas Lauritzen explains that it is “basically a cochlear implant…but for the eyes”
Cochlear implants have been around for quite some time and work by circumventing dead hair cells on the inner ear that respond to acoustic signals by having cells measure sounds as vibrations. Second Sight’s Argus II device circumvents photoreceptors, cells that measure light.
For this latest project Lauritzen took the pre-existing Argus II and re-worked its functions. The Argus II itself is a ground-breaking ocular neuroprosthetic device that has already been implanted in more than 50 patients. Its primary intention was to help those with the inherited degenerative eye disorder Retinitis Pigmentosa and it works by helping the wearer to see movement, objects and color.
Lauritzen and his team wanted to improve the Argus II because visual cues such as letters and sentences were often difficult to read and took the wearers a long time to interpret. That it how the idea for the Braille streaming came about and the researchers implanted a 10×6 electrode array directly onto the person’s retina. This implant was directly connected to a miniscule video camera attached to a pair of glasses. It also taps into a wearable mini-computer that processes the video and regulates the current sent to the electrodes.
By using this implant the Argus II wearer gets a visual perception of the Braille letters from the stream. Lauritzen said the results were encouraging and that they helped to increase reading speeds by “more than 20-fold.”
The Argus II is already commercially available in Europe and now Lauritzen is hoping to get FDA approval to bring his device to the U.S.
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