Scientists all over the world have been working hard to help people who are unable to move, see or take care of themselves for various reasons restore self-sufficiency. Being able to restore vision to the blind or visually impaired is one of the most significant challenges facing researchers. A team of engineers from EPFL has developed a technology that allows blind people to partially restore their vision.

　　 The team developed a retinal implant that can be used with smart glasses with cameras and a microcomputer. The system is designed to use electrodes to stimulate the retinal cells of blind people and provide them with an artificial vision. The camera embedded in the smart glasses can capture the image in the wearer's field of view and send the data to a microcomputer placed in one end part of the glasses.

　　 The microcomputer converts the data into light signals and sends them to the electrodes in the retinal implant. Electrodes stimulate the retina, allowing the wearer to see a simple black-and-white version of the image. The user will see an image composed of light spots that appear when retinal cells are stimulated.

　　 However, users will have to learn to interpret these light spots to distinguish shapes and objects. Researchers liken it to looking at the night sky and learning to recognize specific constellations. One of the main caveats of the system is that it has not been tested on humans. The current test is using a virtual reality program to simulate what the patient sees with the implant.

　　 The retinal implant contains 10,500 electrodes, and each electrode is used to generate a light spot. This is a challenge because these light spots must be far enough apart so that the patient can distinguish the difference between the two light spots that are close to each other, but the density must be large enough to provide sufficient resolution. Testing of this system is in progress.

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