Second Sight, a California-based company aiming to help those with degenerative eye disease by way of technology, its flagship product is approved for “clinical and commercial use” in Europe. This product is an advanced camera that gets implanted on the retina! Check the details after the jump!
The product is the Argus II. It’s like a retinal prosthesis (read: implant) that can at least partially restore lost vision. It works a little like this: patients wear the camera-laden glasses, where signals are grabbed and fed wirelessly to a chip implanted near ones retina. The information is beamed to around 60 electrodes that “stimulate retinal cells, producing light in a patient’s view.” According to Technology Review, “the process works for people with retinitis pigmentosa because the disease damages only the light-sensing photoreceptors, leaving the remaining retinal cells healthy.” For now, the $115,000 device will only be available through a smattering of clinics in Switzerland, France and the UK.
