Israel develops technology to help the blind
A team of Israeli scientists at Bar-Ilan University have developed technology that could help people born blind see, with the help of a bionic contact lens.
The technology involves a camera that receives visual information from the environment and transmits the signal to a bionic contact lens. The lens transmits the signal via electrodes to the cornea, from there to the sensory areas of the brain, stimulating the simulated visual information. The bionic lens stimulates the corneal nerves in the outer part of the eye, which are then connected to the sensory information processing area of the brain.
A tiny camera, with an image sensor and an electronic signal amplifier placed outside the patient’s body, can be attached to eyeglasses or a mobile device. Scientists use super-resolution techniques to encode images with many pixels and compress them into a few pixels.
Professor Zeev Zalevsky, head of the research team, explained that the encoding helps compress visual images, reducing the number of pixels but allowing the transmission of visual information similar to the vision of a healthy person.
After being electronically amplified, the compressed information is transmitted wirelessly from the camera to a bionic contact lens in the eye. This lens will have about 10,000 tiny electrodes that help simulate the cornea. Stimulation is transmitted from the cornea through the nervous system to the areas of the brain that process visual information. In this way, even people who are born blind can see.
Professor Zeev Zalevsky affirmed that this technology brings many benefits to humanity, especially bringing light to people who are born blind without surgery or damaging the senses and vital organs of the body.
The technology has yet to be clinically tested, but over the past few months, the feasibility of the system has been tested, allowing the test subjects to see in black, white and gray at a resolution of less than 100 pixels.
According to Professor Zalevsky, the real lenses will include 10,000 electrodes to help receive visual images with higher resolution and possibly color in the future./.
According to (TTXVN) - VT
