Harley Street surgeon develops artificial retina

Over the last few years, ophthalmologist Professor Lyndon Da Cruz, who carried out the first bionic eye surgery in the UK, has used technology to enhance or restore human vision. The surgery was so effective that people who were almost blind can now read large  letters, words and locate objects. 

“I work with people who have suffered profound vision loss and it was very frustrating for me to have nothing to offer those with a severe retinal disease,” commented Professor Da Cruz. “Suddenly, advances in technology made it plausible to investigate solutions to conditions we had no treatment for.” He explained that the ‘bionic eye’ isn’t actually an eye; with the many complex structures that would entail. It is a device designed to replicate the role of the retina – turning light into electrical signals which are then sent off to the brain. “A better name would be an artificial retina,” Professor Da Cruz continued, “because the device has to be implanted into a normally-shaped and structured eye, with a functioning optic nerve.”

The human retina works using cells about one micron wide and 100 microns long, a micron being 1,000th of a millimetre, so a straight replication of retinal structures is still a long way off. Instead, the team have developed a multi-part system. The system is made up of a video camera set within a pair of glasses, and a computer which converts the feed from the camera into a series of electrical signals. These signals are transmitted wirelessly to a receiver on the eye, which passes the signals to electrode array of the artificial retina that stimulates the residual retina. The signals created are sent to the brain.