Monday, March 10, 2008
Medical technology note: Bionic eye
Cool:
A bionic device the size of a pencil eraser - the labor of 20 years for a group of visionary Hub doctors and scientists - is offering hope that some forms of blindness could be alleviated within a few years.
The Boston Retinal Implant Project, partially based at the V.A. Medical Center in Jamaica Plain, is one of 22 programs around the world working to restore vision to the degenerative blind. Their work: a bio-electronic implant that delivers images to the brain via a connector the width of a human hair.
“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,” said Dr. Joseph Rizzo III, who founded the project in the late 1980s and co-directs the 36-member team.
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, atThe SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN and the BIONIC WOMAN are getting married