Written on March 12, 2008 – 5:53 am | by Bogdan Alex |
The nutty scientists have already implanted bionic eyes into some poor blinded cats and the lucky creatures got their sight back, more or less. Now, a group of visionary doctors and scientists is spreading hope all over the world with their ingenious bionic eyes that could alleviate some human forms of blindness in a couple of years.

This is part of the Boston Retinal Implant Project, which is supposed to improve on a bio-electronic implant that delivers images to the brain via a connector the width of a human hair. The project has been around for more than 20 years and Dr. Joseph Rizzo III, the founder of this endeavor, points out that “there has been this explosion of interest in this field because basically the technology in the last 20 years has become miniaturized enough and sophisticated enough so that for the first time we can imagine building something small enough to put in the eye.”

The main purpose for now is to restore partial sight to people who have slowly gone blind because of degenerative diseases of the retina. The bionic eyeball the size of a pencil eraser is implanted behind the retina at the back of the eyeball, working as a light transmitter. However, scientists say that this would only work for patients who were once able to see and have partially intact optic nerve cells. People who are blind from birth or suffer from glaucoma cannot benefit from the implant at this time.

Current tests have revealed the fact that the implanted bionic eyes give blind people a general sense of their surroundings so they can function on a basic level. Nonetheless, researchers do hope to improve the technology so that users can recognize things like facial detail and expressions in the near future.