{"id":7181,"date":"2016-01-07T08:42:39","date_gmt":"2016-01-07T08:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=7181"},"modified":"2016-01-07T08:42:39","modified_gmt":"2016-01-07T08:42:39","slug":"uk-woman-become-able-to-see-again-with-her-bionic-eye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/uk-woman-become-able-to-see-again-with-her-bionic-eye\/","title":{"rendered":"UK Woman become able to see again with her bionic eye"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Rhian<\/a>
Rhian Lewis (Image: BBC)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When she was five-years-old, Cardiff resident Rhian Lewis was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a disease that causes retinal degeneration as photoreceptor cells die off. There is no cure, and eventually Lewis was completely blind in her right eye and had no vision in her left eye.<\/span><\/p>\n

But surgeons from the Oxford Eye Hospital at Oxford\u2019s John Radcliffe Hospital have successfully installed a 3 x 3 mm, wafer-thin electronic chip in the back of Lewis\u2019 right eye, giving the 49-year-old mother of two a chance to see again.<\/span><\/p>\n

The technology and Lewis\u2019 story will air on BBC\u2019s \u201cTrust Me I\u2019m A Doctor,\u201d which is slated to air Wednesday, Jan. 6. The show also captures the moment when Lewis reads the time correctly, a task she hasn\u2019t been able to do with her right eye for about 16 years.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHonest to God, that felt like Christmas Day,\u201d Lewis\u00a0said<\/span><\/a>. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[pullquote]According to Oxford, the chip\u2014developed by the German engineering firm Retina Implant AG\u2014\u201ccaptures the light entering the eye to stimulate the nerve cells of the inner retina to deliver signals to the brain through the optic nerve.\u201d[\/pullquote]<\/p>\n

The small chip was inserted into the back of Lewis\u2019 right eye in a six-hr plus operation. Since Lewis still had an intact optic nerve and the necessary brain wiring for vision, the scientists just needed a device to substitute for the photoreceptors\u2019 function.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Oxford, the chip\u2014developed by the German engineering firm Retina Implant AG\u2014\u201ccaptures the light entering the eye to stimulate the nerve cells of the inner retina to deliver signals to the brain through the optic nerve.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe device is connected to a tiny computer that sits underneath the skin behind the ear,\u201d the hospital continued. \u201cThis is powered by a magnetic coil which is applied to the skin\u2014from the outside this looks similar to a hearing aid.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The device is then turned on following the completion of any healing required from the surgery. At first, the images appear as flashes of light, but eventually the brain begins to make sense of the flashes, converting them into shapes and objects. The image is akin to the black and white, grainy images of the first television pictures, according to the hospital. The chip is limited to 1,600 pixels. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a big step forward for Lewis, who hasn\u2019t visually seen her children for around eight years, or glimpsed her own face.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lewis\u2019 implant is part of ongoing research that is funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)\u2019s Invention for innovation program, which has partnered with Retina Implant AG and NIHR\u2019s Oxford Biomedical Research Centre.<\/span><\/p>\n

Eventually, Lewis walked around outside with the implant. She\u00a0said<\/span><\/a>, \u201cI walked up the street, and the lady from social services said to me to point out anything I thought might or might not be there. And the first thing I thought \u2018there might be something there,\u2019 there was a car, a silver car, and I couldn’t believe it, because the signal was really strong, and that was the sun shining on the silver car. And I was just, well, I was just so excited, I was quite teary!\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Lewis is the first person in the U.K. to receive this \u201cbionic eye.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

surgeons from the Oxford Eye Hospital at Oxford\u2019s John Radcliffe Hospital have successfully installed a 3 x 3 mm, wafer-thin electronic chip in the back of Lewis\u2019 right eye, giving the 49-year-old mother of two a chance to see again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/bt1601_rhian_lewis_2.jpg",1200,575,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/bt1601_rhian_lewis_2-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/bt1601_rhian_lewis_2-300x143.jpg",300,143,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/bt1601_rhian_lewis_2.jpg",750,359,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/bt1601_rhian_lewis_2-1024x490.jpg",750,359,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/bt1601_rhian_lewis_2.jpg",1200,575,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/bt1601_rhian_lewis_2.jpg",1200,575,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/bt1601_rhian_lewis_2.jpg",1200,575,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/bt1601_rhian_lewis_2.jpg",870,417,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/bt1601_rhian_lewis_2.jpg",600,288,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/bt1601_rhian_lewis_2.jpg",600,288,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/bt1601_rhian_lewis_2.jpg",760,364,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/bt1601_rhian_lewis_2.jpg",550,264,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/bt1601_rhian_lewis_2.jpg",95,46,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/bt1601_rhian_lewis_2.jpg",640,307,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/bt1601_rhian_lewis_2.jpg",96,46,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/bt1601_rhian_lewis_2.jpg",150,72,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Research<\/a>","tag_info":"Research","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}