RWC 2024: Bionic Vision Technology: Restoration of the functional vision of late-stage retinitis pigmentosa patients

Professor Paulo-Eduardo Stanga spoke with Modern Retina about a new wearable assistance device at the 2024 Retina World Congress meeting held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The topic was entitled, "Bionic Vision Technology - Restoration of the functional vision of late-stage retinitis pigmentosa patients with novel vision processing software algorithms and a second-generation suprachoroidal retinal prosthesis"

Video Transcript:

Editor's note: The below transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Professor Paulo-Eduardo Stanga:

Hi, I'm Professor Paulo Stanga. I'm a consultant vitreoretinal surgeon, and I'm a professor of ophthalmology at University College London. And I'm the director and lead vitreoretinal surgeon at The Retina Clinic London in London, UK. Let me share with you this new device [for] the treatment of blindness in patients with severe loss of vision from inherited retinal dystrophies. So, this new device is consists on a special pair of of glasses with mounted cameras and tracking system. And the patient wears this pair of glasses, and the camera captures the environment. The information is transmitted to a microprocessor that's the size of a pack of cigarettes. With multimodal image processing, the information travels back and is relayed on to this stimulator that is fitted subcutaneously behind the ear. And there's a cable that travels subcutaneously and an array of electrodes with 44 channels is inserted in the suprachorodial space, and this stimulates the retina bypassing the photoreceptors stimulating directly the ganglion cells. So, work has already been carried out very successfully, and patients implanted have already shown significant benefit in locating faces, locating an empty chair, and assessing depth perception. We are looking forward to a pivotal study, which should start in 2025.