Year after year, you gradually start to lose your vision, and you know that at one point you will become completely blind. A new prosthetic vision device, however, known as the bionic eye, has shown promise in restoring vision to those with degenerative eye diseases by sending lightwave signals to the optic nerve, helping people see the world again. Dr. Joseph Rizzo, founder of “The Bionic Eye” and director of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear’s Neuro-Ophthalmology Service, came across the idea of a bionic eye while performing transplant surgery.
He realized as he was cutting into the retina that he was cutting nerve tissue that was still intact in patients with diseases he was working to treat. "So it made much more sense to me to utilize those nerve fibers that are there rather than trying to recreate nerve connections with the transplant," he says. Constructing the bionic eye involves a…
