Right off the bat, realize that this isn’t about restoring 20/20 vision to blind people…but rather, helping those who lost their sight due to medical conditions (in this case, retinitis pigmentosa) restore partial vision.  It’s amazing technology…a retinal implant uses a 1500 pixel sensor to receive light through the eye, and transfers it (via electrical signals) to the nerves in the eye for processing by the brain.  This gives these people a very rudimentary level of vision, but adequate enough to detect the objects around them, make out the horizon, houses, trees, rivers, cars.  Close up, they can even tell if someone is smiling or wearing glasses.  Pretty amazing tech.

(via SmartPlanet)