Second Sight has received Food and Drug Administration approval
for the Argus II, a device that lets blind people see. It doesn't fully
restore their vision by any means, but it combines a high-quality video
camera, digital processing equipment, and an implant capable of
stimulating the optic nerves of even severely damaged patients. That
gives them some visual perception that could let a previously blind
individual see a crosswalk on a street, find the stove and its burners,
or other macro-scale objects. It doesn't work for everyone since you
need working optical cells, but for patients whose blindness is caused
by retina damage, it could be a total gamechanger.
Of course the ability to cure the blind could also lead to "higher
health care costs" (cue threatening music). Most likely it won't
actually make "health care costs" much higher, simply because the share
of the population with severe retina damage is pretty small. But it's
still an amazing breakthrough. Restoring the sight of blind people is
genuinely miraculous. And further technological breakthroughs to
ameliorate more common ailments would be good things, not bad things.
Which is why I don't love the rhetoric of health care costs.
Inefficiency is costly, and we should strike to purge it from
the system. But new cures may be expensive without being costly at all.
Blindness is costly. Chronic lower back pain is costly. Cancer is
costly. Finding ways to treat these problems will likely lead to the
expenditure of funds on the treatments, but that's because the
treatments are valuable.
Eric Selby, 68, uses a "sight" camera fitted to a pair of glasses and Argus II implants in his right eye to detect light.
The Argus II system, which is already in use in Europe, is designed to help patients with retinitis pigmentosa – a rare genetic disorder that damages and kills light-processing cells in the retina, and affects around 100,000 Americans, writes the WSJ.
A miniature camera mounted on a pair of glasses transmits images to a belt-worn video processor. There, the images are converted into patterns of light and dark. This data is then sent wirelessly to a sheet of electrodes implanted in the retina, simulating pixels of light that the eye ‘sees’. This information is then sent to the brain and processed normally as an image, as this video from the Argus II’s manufacturer, Second Sight Medical Products of California, explains:
The device, which costs about $150,000 not including implant surgery or training, can’t make a blind person see — at least not in the normal sense.
But it can allow them to identify contours and boundaries of objects, particularly when there is contrast between light and dark – allowing them to distinguish, for example, curbs from asphalt roads whilst walking along.
“Without the system, I wouldn’t be able to see anything at all, and if you were in front of me and you moved left and right, I’m not going to realize any of this,” 74-year-old Elias Konstantopolous, who is one of about 50 people who have been using the Argus II in trials for several years, told the New York Times. “When you have nothing, this is something. It’s a lot.”
Dr. Mark S. Humayun, an ophthalmologist and biomedical engineer at the University of Southern California, spent 20 years developing the device. He told the New York Times that he envisions using the technology to treat other conditions such as bladder control problems or spinal paralysis by implanting electrodes in those parts of the body.
Source : SLate , Newsf Time , and U Tube(15th feb 2013)
Argus II glasses with embedded camera
Photo courtesy Second Sight Eric Selby, 68, uses a "sight" camera fitted to a pair of glasses and Argus II implants in his right eye to detect light.
The Argus II system, which is already in use in Europe, is designed to help patients with retinitis pigmentosa – a rare genetic disorder that damages and kills light-processing cells in the retina, and affects around 100,000 Americans, writes the WSJ.
A miniature camera mounted on a pair of glasses transmits images to a belt-worn video processor. There, the images are converted into patterns of light and dark. This data is then sent wirelessly to a sheet of electrodes implanted in the retina, simulating pixels of light that the eye ‘sees’. This information is then sent to the brain and processed normally as an image, as this video from the Argus II’s manufacturer, Second Sight Medical Products of California, explains:
The device, which costs about $150,000 not including implant surgery or training, can’t make a blind person see — at least not in the normal sense.
But it can allow them to identify contours and boundaries of objects, particularly when there is contrast between light and dark – allowing them to distinguish, for example, curbs from asphalt roads whilst walking along.
“Without the system, I wouldn’t be able to see anything at all, and if you were in front of me and you moved left and right, I’m not going to realize any of this,” 74-year-old Elias Konstantopolous, who is one of about 50 people who have been using the Argus II in trials for several years, told the New York Times. “When you have nothing, this is something. It’s a lot.”
Dr. Mark S. Humayun, an ophthalmologist and biomedical engineer at the University of Southern California, spent 20 years developing the device. He told the New York Times that he envisions using the technology to treat other conditions such as bladder control problems or spinal paralysis by implanting electrodes in those parts of the body.
Source : SLate , Newsf Time , and U Tube(15th feb 2013)
No comments:
Post a Comment