American scientists have been able to restore patients' vision with an implant
Brain-computer interface (BCI) developers Science Corporation have announced successful preliminary results from clinical trials of their Prima retinal implant. It was able to fully restore vision to study participants.
The implant is a miniaturized wireless subretinal device paired with eyeglasses. The system includes a handheld processor to adjust zoom and brightness, sunglass lenses to optimize light, a camera to capture visual information and a projection module that sends infrared light into the eye.
The Prima implant, implanted in 38 patients who had lost their central visual field due to geographic atrophy, allowed the subjects to read and clearly recognize faces. On average, the patients were able to see 23 letters on a table (red line), and the maximum improvement was 59 letters (blue line). The scientists are already working on bringing the technology to market.
According to the researchers, this is the first time that blind patients have been definitively shown to regain fluent reading ability. This is a huge breakthrough in the field. In the future, it is planned to obtain CE marking (European conformity) and bring the implant to the market.