What is Artificial Intelligence?

a diagram illustrating how the photovoltaic retinal prosthesis works

A Pro-forming photovoltaic artificial retina has just been launched after several years of research and development.

The good news is, this retinal prosthesis works by feeding the embedded solar cells with a beam of light. Unlike other types of retinal prosthesis which uses RF signals to power the nano-circuits, this new retinal prosthesis uses light to activate both power and data cells.

Researchers from Standford University have uniquely designed this photovoltaic retinal prosthesis with miniature solar cells. The 3mm thick subretinal device works together with a video camera that captures images, a pocket PC that processes the video feed, and a bright near-infrared LCD display built into video goggles, which beams invisible light to the chip.

This Stanford device is implanted in the back of the retina. The chip is also configured in three layers such that together are 30 micrometers thick. The layer is a series of pixels, each formed from a three photovoltaic cells of three different sizes. The purpose of which is to boost the amount of current each pixel sends to the still functional intermediate layers of the retina that perform the eye’s natural image processing and data compression.

According to Daniel Palanker, a Stanford professor of ophthalmology who worked on the chip, "a photovoltaic prosthesis is limited to a pixel size of about 50 µm, corresponding to visual acuity of 20/100." Which is already sufficient for face recognition and for reading large fonts.

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