Photovoltaic restoration of sight with high visual acuity

Henri Lorach, Georges Goetz, Richard Smith, Xin Lei, Yossi Mandel, Theodore Kamins, Keith Mathieson, Philip Huie, James Harris, Alexander Sher, Daniel Palanker

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

275 Scopus citations

Abstract

Patients with retinal degeneration lose sight due to the gradual demise of photoreceptors. Electrical stimulation of surviving retinal neurons provides an alternative route for the delivery of visual information. We demonstrate that subretinal implants with 70-μm-wide photovoltaic pixels provide highly localized stimulation of retinal neurons in rats. The electrical receptive fields recorded in retinal ganglion cells were similar in size to the natural visual receptive fields. Similarly to normal vision, the retinal response to prosthetic stimulation exhibited flicker fusion at high frequencies, adaptation to static images and nonlinear spatial summation. In rats with retinal degeneration, these photovoltaic arrays elicited retinal responses with a spatial resolution of 64 ± 11 μm, corresponding to half of the normal visual acuity in healthy rats. The ease of implantation of these wireless and modular arrays, combined with their high resolution, opens the door to the functional restoration of sight in patients blinded by retinal degeneration.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)476-482
Number of pages7
JournalNature Medicine
Volume21
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 May 2015

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved.

Funding

We would like to thank D. Boinagrov, E.J. Chichilnisky, M.F. Marmor and S. Picaud for stimulating discussions and encouragement. We would also like to thank J. Liao for providing the VEP recording setup, S. Lee for assistance in developing surgical procedures, as well as P. Haeusser, S. Kachiguine, P. Hottowy and A. Litke for providing and supporting the multielectrode array recording setup. Funding was provided by the US National Institutes of Health (grant R01-EY-018608, D.P.), the Department of Defense (grant W81XWH-15-1-0009, D.P.) and the Stanford Spectrum fund (D.P.). A.S. was supported by a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface and a Pew Charitable Trusts Scholarship in the Biomedical Sciences. K.M. was supported by an SU2P fellowship as part of a RCUK Science Bridges award. H.L. was supported by the Foundation Voir et Entendre (Paris) and Pixium Vision.

FundersFunder number
Stanford Spectrum fund
National Institutes of Health
U.S. Department of DefenseW81XWH-15-1-0009
National Eye InstituteR01EY018608
Burroughs Wellcome Fund
Fondation Voir et Entendre

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