BIONIC EYE -A Novel Technique

V.S.S.Srinivas IIIyr ECE., Pragati Engg. College., Email: vss_srinivas48@yahoo.co.in Ph: 9949729848. B.S.R.Narayana IIIyr ECE., Pragati Engg. College., Email: bsrnarayana@yahoo.com Ph: 0884-2376993.

Abstract:
In a healthy eye, the rods and cones on the retina convert light into tiny electrochemical impulses that are sent through the optic nerve and into the brain, where theyre decoded into images. If the retina no longer functions correctly due to conditions such as Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) or Age-related Macular degeneration (AMD)the optic nerve can be given information from an artificial source bypassing the photoreceptor mechanism in the path. Capturing images and converting them into electrical signals is the easy part. The much trickier part is wiring the input into a persons nervous system. Retinal implants currently being tested pick up radio signals from a camera mounted on a pair of glasses and then directly stimulate the nerve cells behind the malfunctioning rods and cones. Subretinal implantation proves to be a better solution than Epiretinal implantation in leading the blind into light.

What is Bionics? The field of bionics concerns the systematic technical implementation of solutions nature has found for particular problems. Today, there are many new, fascinating approaches for developing bionic innovations due to recent dynamic advances in biological research and technology especially at the molecular level. While biotechnology addresses the scientific-technical realm lying between biology and chemistry, bionics closes the gaps separating the fields of biology, physics and engineering. Bionics pursues an interdisciplinary approach to solving application oriented problems. The results of bionic research and development are, however, never reducible to a one to one copy of the models in nature which provided the original inspiration.

The Bionic eye:

Bionics has already opened the door for replacing lenses and corneas and is focusing on understanding how to engineer a new eye for those who have a retinal disease, which would enable 10 million people to regain a sense of sight. The idea for sending an electrical current to the nerve ganglia behind the retina started in 1988 when a blind person demonstrated that he could see points of light by the ARCC (artificial retina component chip). This tested method proved that the nerves behind the retina could still possibly function even though the retina degenerated. Scientists believe that if they could replace the retina with a device that could translate images to electrical impulses then vision could be restored. But the salty conditions of the eye could encourage corrosion in the

delicate electronics required for this technology. Researchers, however, have designed a chip that could possibly work because it would use an external laser to power the chip. This should eliminate the problem of the how to keep a battery working in the wet, salty environment of the eye. The power source would have to be able to pass through the cornea without damaging the corneal tissue, though.

Fig: Smart EyeBand A light tap on the side of your head could one day restore your eyesight, believe scientists. The tap would tighten a band of artificial muscle wrapped round your eyeballs, changing their shape and bringing blurry images into focus. While the idea has a high 'yuk' factor, the people behind it are confident it will be a safe and effective way to improve vision. By using artificial muscle a "smart eye band". It will be stitched to the sclera, the tough white outer part of the eyeball, and activated by an electromagnet in a hearing-aid-sized unit fitted behind one ear. Most of the eye's focusing is done by the cornea, the hard transparent surface that covers both the pupil and the iris; the lens is responsible only for fine-tuning. Light travels through the cornea and lens to focus on the retina at the back of the eyeball. The closer an object is, the farther back in the eye it will be focused. The lens compensates by adjusting its strength to bring the focus back onto the retina. If the cornea or lens do not focus strongly enough or the eyeball is too short, the light will focus behind the retina, blurring images of close-up objects. This is long-sightedness. Conversely, if the eyeball is too long, the light will focus in front of the retina, yielding the blurry images of far-off objects characteristic of short-sightedness. Tightening the smart eye band causes the eyeball to elongate, just as squeezing the middle of a peeled hard-boiled egg causes the egg to lengthen. In long-sighted people this pushes the retina backwards, bringing close-up objects back into focus. Expanding the eye band causes the eyeball to shorten. In short-sighted people this will bring the retina forward to intersect with the focused light, making far-off images sharp and clear again. Stitching a band of artificial muscle to your eyeball sounds drastic, but the necessary surgical techniques are already commonly used for treating detached retinas. This smart

eye band is far more flexible than laser surgery, in which a laser flattens the cornea by eroding part of it.

Retinal prosthesis:
Researchers published a design of an optoelectronic retinal prosthesis system that can stimulate the retina with resolution corresponding to a visual acuity of 20/80--sharp enough to orient yourself toward objects, recognize faces, read large fonts, watch TV and, perhaps most important, lead an independent life. The researchers hope their device may someday bring artificial vision to those blind due to retinal degeneration. Degenerative retinal diseases result in death of photoreceptors--rodshaped cells at the retina's periphery responsible for night vision and coneshaped cells at its center responsible for color vision. Worldwide, 1.5 million people suffer from retinitis pigmentosa (RP), the leading cause of inherited blindness. In the Western world, age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the major cause of vision loss in people over age 65, and the issue is becoming more critical as the population ages. Each year, 700,000 people are diagnosed with AMD, with 10 percent becoming legally blind, defined by 20/400 vision. Many AMD patients retain some degree of peripheral vision. If one could bypass the photoreceptors and directly stimulate the inner retina with visual signals, one might be able to restore some degree of sight. To that end, the researchers plan to directly stimulate the layer underneath the dead photoreceptors using a system that consists of a tiny video camera mounted on transparent "virtual reality" style goggles. There's also a wallet-sized computer processor, a solar-powered battery implanted in the iris and a light-sensing chip implanted in the retina.

Fig: Anti-blindness Goggles

The chip is the size of half a rice grain--3 millimeters--and allows users to perceive 10 degrees of visual field at a time. One design includes an orchard of pillars: One side of each pillar is a light-sensing pixel and the other side is a cell-stimulating electrode. Pillar density dictates image resolution, or visual acuity. The strip of orchard across the top third of the chip is densely planted. The strip in the middle is moderately dense, and the strip at the bottom is sparser still. Dense electrodes lead to better image resolution but may inhibit the desirable migration of retinal cells into voids near electrodes, so the different electrode densities of a current chip design allow the researchers to explore parameters and come up with a chip that performs optimally. Another design-pore electrodes--involves an array of cavities with stimulating electrodes located inside each of them.

Fig: Orchard of Pillars WORKING: How does the system work when viewing, say, a flower? First, light from the flower enters the video camera. The video camera then sends the image of the flower to the wallet-sized computer for complex processing. The processor then wirelessly sends its image of the flower to an infrared LED-LCD screen mounted on the goggles. The transparent goggles reflect an infrared image into the eye and onto the retinal chip. Just as a person with normal vision cannot see the infrared signal coming out of a TV remote control, this infrared flower image is also invisible to normal photoreceptors. But for those sporting retinal implants, the infrared flower electrically stimulates the implant's array of photodiodes. The result? They may not have to settle for merely smelling the roses.

Fig: Working of a Retinal Implant

Complex processing: The eyes have it The eye is a complex machine. It has more than 120million photoreceptors i.e., equivalent to 100 megapixels. And if electronic cameras do a good job of image processing, the eye does a spectacular job, compressing information before sending it to the brain through the 1 million axons that make up the optic nerve. We have a built-in processor in the eye. Before it goes into the brain, the image is significantly processed. The bottom layer of photoreceptors is where rhodopsin--a protein pigment that converts light into an electrical signal--exists. But as far as signal processing is concerned, the signal enters the inner nuclear layer, populated with bipolar, amacrine and horizontal cells. These three cellular workhouses process the signals and transfer them to the ganglion cell layer, or "output cascade" of nerves that deliver signal pulses to the brain. It's best to place an implant at the earliest accessible level of image processing. The earliest accessible level in degenerated retina is in the nuclear layer, and the more you go along the chain of image processing, the more complex the signals become. Researchers try to utilize most of the processing power remaining in the retina after retinal degeneration by placing their implant on the side of the retina facing the interior of the eye ("subretinal" placement), as opposed to the idea of placing retinal implants on the side of the retina facing the outside of the eyeball ("epiretinal" placement). A crucial aspect of visual perception is eye motion. Due to the eye's natural image-processing strengths by subretinal placement of implants, the system tracks rapid intermittent eye movements required for natural image perception. In the subretinal system, image amplification and other processing occur in the hardware, outside the eye. If amplification occurred inside the implant's pixels, as it does in epiretinal, there'd be no way short of surgery to make adjustments. Bionics and Physics: The new design answers major questions about what's feasible for bionic devices. Biology imposes limitations, such as the needs for a system that will not heat cells by more than 1 degree Celsius and for electrochemical interfaces that aren't corrosive. Current retinal implants provide very low resolution--just a few hundred pixels. But several thousand pixels would be required for the restoration of functional sight. The Stanford design employs a pixel density of up to 2,500 pixels per millimeter, corresponding to a visual acuity of 20/80, which could provide functional vision for reading books and using the computer. A major limiting factor in achieving high resolution concerns the proximity of electrodes to target cells. A pixel density of 2,500 pixels per square

millimeter corresponds to a pixel size of only 20 micrometers. But for effective stimulation, the target cell should not be more than 10 micrometers from the electrode. It is practically impossible to place thousands of electrodes so close to cells. With subretinal implants but not epiretinal ones, researchers discovered a phenomenon--retinal migration--that they now rely on to encourage retinal cells to move near electrodes--within 7 to 10 microns. Within three days, cells migrate to fill the spaces between pillars and pores.

Conclusion:
In a more specific meaning, bionics is a creativity technique that tries to use biological prototypes to get ideas for engineering solutions. This approach is motivated by the fact that biological organisms and their organs have been well optimized by evolution. A less common and maybe more recent meaning of the term "bionics" refers to merging organism and machine. This approach results in hybrid systems combining biological and engineering parts, which can also be referred as cybernetic organism (the cyborg).

REFERENCES: 1.Integrated Circuit Research Vol-3 published by University Of Florida 2. Advancements in Bionics www.abc.net.au 3. www.news.stanford.edu 4. Body Atlas Illustrated by Giuliano Fornari and Steve Parker