Can you imagine what a person feels who does not see or almost does not see the world around? This condition is called blindness — the inability to perceive visual stimuli due to pathological disorders in the eye itself, in the optic nerves or in the brain. In 1972, the World Health Organization (WHO) adopted the following definition: a person is considered blind if the sharpness of central vision under conditions of maximum correction does not exceed 3/60. With this vision, a person in daylight conditions with maximum optics correction is unable to count fingers from a distance of 3 meters.
So for such cases, the idea of electrical stimulation of the retina or visual cortex was proposed, the creation of a prosthesis that, by the mechanism of action, simulates the actual processes of transmission of electrical signals.
There are several variants of electronic implants, each year new ideas appear, but the term and the Bionic Eye itself were developed by Daniel Palanker, a staff member at Stanford University and his research group Biomedical Physics and Ophthalmic Technologies.
The implantation of the Argus II bionic eye model (by the way, the only model that has an EU brand, but not certified in Russia) was performed in Russia in July 2017 for one patient. And from all sources of television broadcasting we heard — now a person will be able to see the world as before. Hundreds of people are asked to put a bionic eye, and some also ask to “implant” the chips for super-vision.
So what do we have today and can the dream to see the world come true after it has lost sight?