Comments on: Artist envisions turning fake eye into bionic eye-cam

San Francisco artist wants to replace her artificial eye with a camera as part of an "experiment in wearable technology."

[Manhattan2]

We have been working on an imaging technology for almost 10 years now that we hope will change the furture for the vision impaired and blind. We call it a Seeing Aid and we need help. Help with defining the objects and obstacles that a blind person would most want to have defined in their surroundings. Go to www.seeingaid.com to learn more and submit your list of items. Elevator button, mailbox, water fountain, trashcans, room numbers are all on our list.

[ausernamenoonehaschosen]

There is so much more work that needs to be done with retinal prostheses before they become a viable option for the general public. An article by Margalit et al. several years ago found that a resolution of 625 pixels (25 x 25) was necessary to provide acceptable use to the patient. For the last 15 years the resolution has increased from 4 pixels to 16, and even then most of the pixels in the 16 didn't work correctly due to crosstalk, bad leads, and other things. Recently work came out demonstraing 25, but clinical testing was lacking. The folks in the boston Retinal Implant Group and at Second Sight have made the greatest clinical contributions with these. One main problem has been the inability to figure out what happens in the retina during stimulation, either when stimulated on the outer side of the retina (subretinally) or on the inside of the retina (epiretinally). Until the researchers know what is going on it will be hard to advance this science much. Talking about bluetooth and firewire is very premature unfortunately.

[Willie Winkie]

Although there is wonderful work being done in the areas of optical prosthetics, I beleive that a true "eye repalcement" will come from organ cloning and cellular regeneration technology. Since the eye is, for all intents and puropses, an extension of the central nervous system, it will take major breakthroughs in neural regenerative medicine to bring about true sight restoration. The prosthetic being discussed by the clever young lady is more akin to modern spy technology. I would be very surprised if our own central intellegence agency didn't already have the necessary hardware "on the shelf" so to speak.

[aka_tripleB]

I would imagine a documentary shot from within a fake eye would be rather disorienting with the blinking, but definately something that could be very enjoyable.

[arthurbraud]

After reading this moving article about one person's reach for what has been the holy grail of like impaired, I was flabbergasted at the negative comments.

Perhaps the comments were designed to present a "reality check" on the idea, maybe they were provided by those not similarly impaired. Who knows, who cares... they had no relevance to the dream.

I, for one, have only dreamed of bilateral vision. I would encourage and praise any interest in the area.

AB

[nuttylittlefish]

This is a cool story, and in a follow up, there is a Canadian doc maker doing this as well check this out

http://eyeborg.blogspot.com/