Depth Filter for Visual Prostheses

Unmet Need
Globally, 733 million people are visually impaired. In the US the economic burden of eye disorders and vision loss is estimated to be over $100 Billion per year. Visual prosthesis devices are used to restore partial vision or improve vision. These devices operate based on neuronal electrical stimulation at different locations along the visual pathways within the central nervous system, with a crucial functionality for any visual prosthesis device being obstacle detection. Current retinal implant prosthesis devices exist that stimulate the retina based on the brightness of the object in the receptive field of the implant, thus providing their wearers with enough visual information to orient themselves with respect to stationary and moving light sources and to discern large shapes. However, one of the largest challenges with retinal prostheses is that their limited resolution, depth perception, and contrast makes image understanding very difficult for the wearers in real-life situations.
 
Technology Overview
Johns Hopkins researchers have developed a technology and method for improving the resolution and depth perception capabilities of retinal prostheses. C15085 will allow wearers to select the portions of the image presented to the user on the basis of their distance, with a mechanism to select the band of distances that are of interest. This will provide users with an improved ability to discern obstacles and moving objects compared to existing devices and will additionally provide users with the ability to select the distances they are observing. In a rapidly growing bionic eye market ($1.5 Billion by 2026, 74.3% CAGR), this product has the potential to dramatically improve the quality of visual prosthesis functionality for millions of visually impaired people.
 
Stage of Development
The researchers have prototyped and tested their improved method on the primary existing FDA approved commercial retinal implant. They have validated the improved ability of users to detect large and small objects and to judge the relative distances of objects on a table and pieces of furniture in a room.
 

Category(s):