The FDA has approved a retina implant, the Argus II, using a sheet of electrodes to partially restore vision. The restored vision is nowhere near perfect, it’s extremely basic, but does provide some level of pattern recognition (it only has 60 electrodes though, so you’re not going to be making out any detail). A camera on a pair of glasses captures the image which is them converted into signals transmitted to the retina implant. A more advanced design, the Alpha IMS (not yet FDA approved), allows users to make out mouth shapes (like smiles), large objects like cars or trees, thanks to its 1500 electrodes (vs. the Argus II’s 60). It also doesn’t require head-mounted glasses like the Argus II, but is still very much in the testing phase.
Retina implants (bionic eye)
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