INTRODUCTION: Researchers working for the Boston Retinal Implant Project have been developing a Bionic eyeimplant that

could restore the eye sight of people who suffer from age related blindness .Theimplant is based on a small chip that is surgically implanted behind the retina, at the back of theeye ball. An ultra-thin wire strengthens the damaged optic nerve; its purpose is to transmit lightand images to the brains vision system, where it is normally processed. Other than the implantedchip and wire, most of the device sits outside the eye. The users would need to wear special eyeglasses battery-powered camera and a transmitter, which would send images to the chipimplanted behind the retina. The new device is expected to be quite durable, since the chip isenclosed in a Titanium casing, making it both water-proof and corrosion-proof. The researchesestimate that the device will last for at least 10 years inside the eye.The purpose of this report is to provide an accurate and detailed description of this bionic eye(optoelectronic retinal prosthesis) and its function.The new technology tested by Mrs. Moorfoot uses an external camera worn on a pair of dark glasses that sends images to a radio receiver implanted near the eye that transmits the signal on to

a tiny silicon and platinum chip that sits on the retina. This information then goes down the opticnerve into the brain. The team lead by Dr .Mark Humayun professor of ophthalmology andBiomedical engineering at the Doheny eye institute in Los Angeles, California have now developed a small and powerful camera that could be implanted inside the patients eye, rather thanworn on a pair of glasses. The camera is very, very small and very low power, so it can go insideyour eye and couple your eye movement to where the camera is Optoeloctronic Retinal Prosthesis: Blindness is one of the most devastating consequences of disease. We develop electronic retinalprosthesis for restoration of sight to patients suffering from degenerative retinal diseases such asRetinitis Pigmentosa and Age-Related Macular Degeneration. In these conditions thephotoreceptor cells slowly degenerate, leading to blindness. However, many of the inner retinalneurons that transmit signals from the photoreceptors to the brain are preserved to a large extentfor a prolonged period of time. -> Electrical stimulation of the remaining retinal neurons can produce phosphenes - perception of light, and the first retinal implants involving a small number o f e l e c t r o d e s ( 1 6 t o 6 0 ) y i e l d e d e n c o u r a g i n g r e s u l t s i n p a t i e n t s w i t h r e t i n a l d e g e n e r a t i o n . However, thousands of pixels are likely to be required for functional restoration of sight, such asreading and face recognition.Development of a high resolution retinal prosthesis faces multiple engineering and biological challenges, such as delivery of information to thousands of pixels at video rate, placement of theelectrodes in close proximity to the target cells, avoidance of fibrotic enc apsulation of theimplant, signal processing that compensates for the partial loss of the retinal neural network, andmany others.