In this Web Exclusive video, Dr. Mark Humayun discusses the workings of the Artificial Retina and explains the surgical procedure used to implant the device in the eye. The first generation of the implant only has 16 pixels, and if a person with normal vision suddenly reduced their sight to this small amount of visual information, he or she would have an incredibly difficult time. However, Dr. Humayun explains that subjects who have the implant learn strategies that help them use these 16 pixels to gather a wealth of information about their environment.
Mark Humayun, M.D., Ph.D. is Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Cell and Neurobiology at the University of Southern California. Dr. Humayun completed his medical degree at Duke University Medical School. While in his residency training at Duke Eye Center, Dr. Humayun earned his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
January 11th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Thank-you for everything you are doing. My mom has macular degeneration and is legally blind in one eye. She fears the other will also become blind. I am a portrait artist. My eyes are a lot like hers, so I also fear retinal problems. Your research gives us both hope for the future. God bless you.
January 28th, 2009 at 11:13 pm
Hope is so uplifting and you have given us just that! We are so grateful there are gifted people like yourself around who can really making a profound difference in quality of life. Research should be given a much more substantial influx of government money and private philanthropy.
November 17th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Are you working on 32 by 32 array of detectors? Regards. PVK