University of Michigan Health System Develops First Bionic Eye

I think some of you out there might have wanted to know how will it be to have bionic a bionic eye. Sure, infra-red vision, optical zoom and object analysis might be a day dream for some, but apparently the tech is starting to move from the land of fiction to the land of reality.

The first step appears to come from surgeons at University of Michigan Health System, achieving the first step in developing a customized DNA chip. It is known as a ‘microarray’, helping to diagnose eye disorders, while having successful performed first ever surgery which involves implanting artificial retinas into the eyes of patients who suffer from retinitis pigmentosa, which happens to be a degenerative eye disease that will eventually lead to blindness if nothing is done.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi_HpbFKnSw[/youtube]

The bionic eye itself was developed by by California-based Second Sight Medical Products, including professors Thiran Jayasundera and David N. Zacks, who are ophthalmologists at the University’s Kellogg Eye Center. And things are looking up for the project as well, since it already received approval from the Food and Drug Administration in 2013, giving a green light for implants to be performed using it.

This might not be the most amazing bionic eye with a lot of features, making you a bionic terminator, but it still is a major evolutionary device that should be strongly considered for the future (and upgrades).

Thank you Ubergizmo for providing us with this information
Image courtesy of Ubergizmo