CRI听力:Breakthrough Retinal Implant Allows Blind Man to See

A ground-breaking retinal implant is now giving three people the chance to see shapes and objects for the first time since they lost their sight to disease.

CRI's Zhang Ru has more on this medical breakthrough.




This man is blind, but he's about to see what's in front of him.

" It's curving like, a little bit like this way. It must be a banana. (applause). That's what it looks like. "

He is one of three people given a retinal implant as part of a trial conducted by the University Eye Hospital in Tuebingen, Germany.

All the patients have retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic disease often leads to blindness.

The implant is a three millimeter chip packed with 1,500 light sensors, fitted beneath the retina. Each sensor sends an electrical signal to nerve cells which is processed by the brain.

The implant then captures images using an external camera mounted on a pair of glasses.

Jonathan Abro also suffers from retinitis pigmentosa but still has some sight. He says he's encouraged by the study's success.

" For somebody to go out and say 'wow blind people can see again,' it's not true, it doesn't happen like that, but for somebody to say, 'people who have lost all or most of their vision are able to distinguish shapes and are learning to see something again that's very exciting. "

Not all blind patients can benefit. If the brain or optic nerve is damaged the implant won't work, but since the results have been so promising a British study is scheduled to take place next year.

Professor Robert MacLaren, a consultant surgeon at the Oxford Eye Hospital, will co-lead that trial.

" We are looking for people who are effectively completely blind from retinosis pigmentosa or at best just have light perception, because we want to give the implant to people initially who are going to benefit most from it. What we're doing is a clinical trial-a study rather than a treatment, so we need to find out exactly what the patients can learn to do with the implant, perhaps in time they will learn to use it more effectively, and this will help us to develop the technology to improve it in future. "

The trial will seek to determine how long the chip will last and how might it be improved to give a sharper image.

For CRI, I'm Zhang Ru.