Grandmother first in UK to use bionic eye chip

AN 88-year-old grandmother who lost the sight in her left eye has become the first person in the UK to detect signals in her eye using a “revolutionary” new bionic chip.

The woman, who has seven children and eight grandchildren, has geographic atrophy, the most common form of dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD). This causes a blind spot in the middle of the eye. The condition affects more than five million people worldwide. The octogenarian, from Dagenham, London, received the implant at Moorfields Eye Hospital in a Europe-wide clinical trial.

In a statement, she said she hoped the implant would allow her to do the things she loved again.

“Losing the sight in my left eye through dry AMD has stopped me from doing the things I love, like gardening, playing indoor bowls and painting with watercolours,” she said. “I am thrilled to be the first to have this implant, excited at the prospect of enjoying my hobbies again and I truly hope that many others will benefit from this too.”

The implant works by surgically inserting a 2mm wide microchip under the centre of a patient’s retina. The patient then wears special glasses, containing a video camera that is linked to a small computer attached to their waistband.

The chip captures video from the glasses, transmits it to the computer, which uses artificial intelligence to process and guide the focus of the glasses. The glasses project this image as an infrared beam back through the eye to the chip, which transforms this into an electrical signal that travels back through the retina into the brain which interprets it as natural vision.

Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust > The 88-year-old woman, who lost the sight in her left eye, has become the first person in the UK to detect signals in her eye using a ‘revolutionary’ new bionic chip