Second Sight’s Orion system generates artificial vision for the blind by wirelessly converting images captured by a tiny video camera mounted on sunglasses into a series of electrical pulses. These pulses then stimulate a set of 60 electrodes implanted on top of the brain’s visual cortex, which perceives patterns of light and interprets them as visual clues.
In addition to the glasses, the system also boasts a belt equipped with a button that patients can press to amplify dark objects in the sun, and press again to visualize light objects in the dark, like an oncoming car’s headlights at night. The implant essentially stimulates the left side of the patient’s brain, thus allowing them to perceive visual cues only from their right-side field of vision. The ultimate goal is to implant both sides of the brain to recover a full field of vision.
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This is the first time we’ve had a completely implantable device that people can use in their own homes without having to be plugged into an external device. It helps them recognize, for example, where a doorway is, where the sidewalk begins or ends or where the crosswalk is. These are all extremely meaningful events that can help improve people’s quality of life,” said Dr. Nader Pouratian, a neurosurgeon at UCLA Health and principal investigator of the five-year study.
