Restaurar a visão com implantes sem fios

The development of retinal implants has been dogged by problems of unwieldiness since the first implantable stimulator for vision restoration was developed in 1968. Sticking a mess of electronics, with wires, cables and inductive coils, into the human visual system was always going to be a tricky business.

James Loudin and his colleagues at Stanford University in California have developed a solution that overcomes many of these problems by the use of special glasses that fire infrared signals into the eye and onto an implanted array of silicon photodiodes. The system simplifies what needs to be implanted and both transmits visual data and power directly to the implants, eliminating the need for any bulky external power source. Their work is published today in Nature Photonics¹.

Retinal implants could help restore vision to damaged eyes.

ANNA OMELCHENKO / SHUTTERSTOCK

In order to explain how the set-up would work, Loudin regularly uses the Star Trek character Geordi LaForge as an analogy. “I'm not well versed in Star Trek any more, and I don't think Geordi had implants,” he says. “However, like his visor, our patients cannot see without the goggles.”

Loudin and his colleagues demonstrated the plausibility of their system by using near-infrared light to stimulate rat retinas into which the photodioides had been implanted. A pocket computer processes images captured by a miniature camera set into a pair of glasses similar to existing video goggles, and a near-to-eye projection system casts these images into the eye and onto the photodiode array using pulsed near-infrared flashes. The array in turn stimulates inner retinal neurons.

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http://www.nature.com/news/restoring-sight-with-wireless-implants-1.10627

Nelson Teixeira nº m4849 Mestrado em Ciências Biomédias