Research Report
I The Bionic Eye
The bionic eye is a device that was designed to restore the sense of vision to people with retinitis
pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration. A bionic eye system consists of a small digital
camera, external processor and an implant with a microchip and stimulating electrodes which get
surgically placed in the back of the eye. For people to benefit from this technology they will need
to have some remaining retinal ganglion cells, a healthy optic nerve and cortex and also, they
must have been able to see in the past so that the vision processing part of the brain has been
developed. The bionic eye has a camera that is attached to a pair of glasses that transmits high-
frequency radio signals to a microchip implanted in the eye. Electrodes on the implanted chip
convert the signals into electrical impulses that stimulate cells in the retina which are connected
to the optic nerve. The impulses are then passed down along the optic nerve to the vision
processing parts of the brain, where they are then interpreted into an image.
A person using a retinal implant will not be able to experience vision like a normal person with
healthy vision does. Vision will be basic at the beginning because people will need to adapt
themselves. With time and patience people will be able to depend on the technology. The bionic
eye works by stimulating the perception of light in the user. What the technology aims to do is
stimulate the phosphenes across the visual field in a way that will enable the user to put together
a picture of the scene they are looking at. The more electrodes the eye contains, the more
phosphenes it will be able to generate which allows the user to see in more detail. Light enters
the eye through the cornea which is the clear bulge at the front of the eyeball. The cornea
gathers light into the pupil, a hole in the middle of the iris, which is the structure that gives the
eye color. Depending on the amount of light the eye has, the iris will contract or expand to adjust
the amount of light required, making the pu...
