Below is the CNN Artificial Vision article from their web site. I had the
pleasure of meeting Doctor Dobelle, and several of his patients in New York
on Monday of this week. Needless to say, I was totally blown away.


      Could bionic eye end blindness?



      By Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Kristi Petersen



      (CNN) --Artificial vision for the blind was once the stuff of science

fiction -- Lt. Geordi La Forge's visor on "Star Trek" or the bionic eye of

"The Six Million Dollar Man."



      But now, a limited form of artificial vision is a reality -- one some

say is one of the greatest triumphs in medical history.



      "We are now at a watershed," Joseph Lazzaro, author of "Adaptive

Technologies for Learning and Work Environments," told CNN. "We are at the

beginning of the end of blindness with this type of technology."



      Any scientific advance would have broad implications. According to

statistics from Research to Prevent Blindness, Inc., 1.1 million people in

the United States are legally blind, while worldwide 42 million people are

without sight.



      The Dobelle Institute is among several institutions trying in essence

to create a new cornea through technology. The cornea allows light into the

interior of the eye.



      Dobelle is using a digital video camera mounted on glasses to capture

an image and send it to a small computer on the patient's belt: The images

are processed and sent to electrodes implanted in the patient's visual

cortex. The electrodes stimulate the brain, producing a pattern of bright

spots that form an image.



      "With this device, you don't lose anything. You actually have a fifth

sense restored, and that is what I just absolutely adore with this device,"

said one of the first eight implant patients to test the technology, a man

who asked to be identified only as Jens.



      "You are no longer blind. You might be blind to some objects, some

situations, but you are not totally blind anymore," he said.



      A Canadian farmer and father of eight, Jens lost his sight 18 years

ago in an accident. Now he's able to navigate through rooms, find doors and

even drive a car to some degree.



      "I was able to very carefully drive and look from my left side to my

right side, making sure I was between this row of trees on the right and the

building on my left," he says. "When I got near any obstruction, I would see

that there was an obstruction. I would also see the lack of obstructions,

knowing I wasn't going to run over anybody ... It was a very nice feeling."



      The black and white image Jens sees is not solid, but resembles a dot

matrix pattern. It's like looking at a sport scoreboard with different light

patterns illuminated to show different scores.



      The miniaturization of equipment and more powerful computers have made

this artificial vision possible, but it's not cheap: The operation,

equipment and necessary training cost $70,000 per patient.



      All eight of the experimental surgeries were performed in Portugal:

FDA regulations still prohibit the procedure in the United States.



      But Dr. Bill Dobelle, of the Dobelle Institute, says the technology

has broad potential.



      "It may not work for people blinded as children or as infants, because

the visual cortex did not develop normally," he says. "But I would say (it

will work) for the vast majority of the blind -- 98 to 99 percent."



      Other researchers are focusing on new technology to replace damaged

retinas, the part of the eye that converts light into electrical impulses

that are sent to the brain to be turned into images.



      Optobionics Corporation of Wheaton, Illinois, says six blind or nearly

blind people can now see light and some can see shapes after having the

company's artificial retina implanted. Optobionics hopes to have the

artificial retina on the market in five years, but critics say it will take

years of independent testing to prove it helps the blind.



      NASA hopes to begin human testing this year on ceramic detectors that

could be implanted in the retina to take over the job of damaged retinal

cells. And the Office of Naval Research goes one step further -- it says it

is on the way to developing a chip that would replicate the entire nerve

center of the retina.



      With all the new research developments coming into view, Jens says

he's glad he's been able to catch a glimpse of the future of blindness.



      "I could see that there was really potential for some really good life

coming ahead of me," he says. "It was like, I would say, throwing back the

curtains in the morning when you get up and letting in sunshine. I would

equate it to that feeling."



      Find this article at:

http://www.cnn.com/2002/HEALTH/06/13/bionic.eye/index.html



http://www.JoeLazzaro.Com