SCIENTISTS are developing a bionic eye that may help to restore sight to people affected by two of the most common forms of blindness.

The tiny implant employs technology similar to that of a digital camera. It works by mimicking the action of the retina, the lining at the back of the eye that converts light into signals to the brain. The implant translates light into electrical impulses and stimulates the retina, fooling the brain into thinking the damaged eye works.

Researchers at Glasgow University have tested the implant on animal retina cells and ultimately hope to use it to help sufferers of age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa, the most common forms of blindness. Both conditions, which affect about one million people in Britain, are caused by the retina failing to work properly.

Keith Mathieson, one of the researchers, said that the prototype had 100 pixels but that the implant would need at least 500 pixels before people “could walk down the street and recognise faces”. He said: “We are between five and ten years from the first human implants, so people should not get too excited too early. It is still essentially a research theme, but we are making advances.”

Dr Mathieson, who is working with James Morrison, of Glasgow University, and Mark Prydderch, of the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils, said that advances in microelectronics had allowed researchers to develop the “retinal prosthesis, a small device to be implanted on the retina itself”.

The device would contain an imaging detector with hundreds of pixels coupled to microscopic stimulating electrodes. “If light forms an image on the detector, then the result will be electrical stimulation of the retina in the shape of this image,” Dr Mathieson said.

“The stimulated cells then send the information via the optic nerve to the brain. The imaging part of the system is based upon the technology used in any digital camera.”

The implant was welcomed by the Royal National Institute for the Blind, Scotland.

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