Improves "Artificial Reviewed" retinal pigmentosia (evening edition Fuji) -Yahoo! News aiming to restore visual recovery of blindly patients

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Artificial visual system under development (provided by Nidek)

[The latest treatment that has advanced so far] "retinal pigmentation", in which the gone in the retina of the eyes gradually does not work due to abnormal gene. It begins with symptoms that make things difficult to see in dark places and narrow their vision, and their vision decreases as they progress. It is the second most common cause of social blindness (hereafter, blindness) that makes daily life difficult, and the frequency of onset is one in 4,000 to 8,000 in Japan. The age of patients, which takes over many years, has reduced central vision and leads to blindness, is often the age of 60. The development of "artificial networks (artificial visual systems)" is being developed in industry -academia collaboration for the purpose of recovering the visual function of patients who have become blind due to retinal pigmentation. How do you recover your vision? Exclusive professor Fujimon, a professor of the Graduate School of Life Function, who conducted clinical research, explains his face photo =. "The retinal is applied to the technology (BMI) that connects the brain and electronic devices directly or indirectly, and is simply the same as artificial endomy. The patient's eyes are the same. Instead, the image of the CCD camera is changed to an electric signal and transmitted to the neural closes through an electrode embedded in the body to reconstruct the visuals in the brain. " It is composed of the device. The external body consists of a small CCD camera attached to the glasses frame, an IC (integrated circuit) that turns the video into a signal, and a primary coil that transmits a signal. The internal device includes a secondary coil that receives the signal, an IC for creating a signal that stimulates the retina, and a multi -pole electrode that transmits its signal. The secondary coil, which is about 500 yen coin, is embedded between the scalp and the skull around the back of the ear, and can be joined with an electromagnetic stone with an outside the body. The polar electrode is fixed near the retina in the back of the white eye. So how does the patient look at the video captured by the camera? "The embedded polar electrodes are lined with 49 electrodes of 7 x 7 pieces, and the captured images are represented in white and black like an electronic bulletin board, so they can only recognize the contour. As a result of a one -year installation test to three patients, the two have improved the visual function, and "I have been able to walk and clean up the laundry after seeing the room corner." I was very pleased. In the future, if I apply AI technology to think about "fusion of video and audio", when the fusion of video and audio is completed, for example, I read out the photographed characters and the color of the product. The video and the audio complement each other, such as communicating with the sound, and gaining more accurate information. It is said that corporate trials will be started by Nidek (Aichi Prefecture), an ophthalmic medical device manufacturer, which is developing jointly. (Takashi Arai)