A biomedical smart sensor for the visually impaired

In this paper, we describe the current version of the artificial retina prosthesis and cortical implant that we are developing. This research project will require significant advances in a variety of disciplines. We have assembled a multidisciplinary team of researchers in Ophthalmology, Neurosurgery, Computer Networking, VLSI, and Sensors to develop the novel solutions needed to make artificial vision for the visually-impaired a reality. This paper describes the novel approach that we have adopted to providing a complete system for restoring vision to visually-impaired persons - from the signals generated by an external camera to an array of sensors that electrically stimulate the retina via a wireless interface.