“So far everyone has been able to see something,” says Brian Mech, Ph. D., M.B.A., and vice president of business development at Second Sight, the company that created the device. “Some of the greatest successes are people who can read large letters. They do sometimes see color, but we haven’t yet focused on reproducing color in a controlled way,” he explains. “We want to wait until black and white is perfected before we worry about color.”

Procedures currently help individuals with retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a disease responsible for roughly 200,000 cases of blindness in the United States. When light enters the eye through the pupil, it strikes the retina at the back of the eye and is converted to an electrical signal by rods and cones. In individuals with RP, these tissues deteriorate, resulting in full or partial blindness.

The restoration process starts with an image captured by a small camera attached to a pair of glasses. After streaming through a video processor, the data is then transferred back through the glasses to a tiny electrode “sheet” implanted on the retina. These electrodes use electrical impulses to communicate visual information to undamaged retinal tissue (just as healthy rods and cones would have done). The result is some degree of sight.

Currently the devices have only 60 electrodes, compared to more than 2 million in HD televisions, so images are still rough. This means that if the entire population of New Mexico plus 17,000 of their relatives were gathered in a field, only 60 would be visible.

The technology has been greatly improved from earlier 16-electrode versions. Before, objects appeared as horizontal lines. Now users can make out basic shapes; some can see faint reflections and differentiate between concrete and grass.

“Our near term goal is to get regulatory approval to market the device in Europe and the United States. This will allow us to generate revenue to fund the development of next generation prostheses with greater numbers of electrodes. This should mean more utility for the patients,” Mech explains.

Researchers from Second Sight will follow project participants for the next three years to track progress. They hope to develop versions with 200 and 1000 electrodes in the future, but so far implant recipients are pleased with results.

"Besides the objective testing that we do to show improvement in visual function, participants are often most excited by personal experiences. One woman saw the moon for the first time in about 20 years," Mech says. "Another can shoot baskets and watch her grandkids play soccer. This is significant."