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TWO UNSW scientists who are working on the bionic eye as part of Bionic Vision Australia have won a prestigious research achievement award.
UNSW Scientia Professor Nigel Lovell and Associate Professor Gregg Suaning were awarded the Bartimaeus Award at the Detroit Institute of Ophthalmology World Congress on Artificial Vision.
The Bartimaeus Award is for internationally recognised contributions to the field of vision restoration by way of neural prosthesis, and is the one of the highest honours for the field.
The researchers, from the UNSW Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering (GBME), started bionic research more than a decade ago, when they tore down old stereos and children’s toys to salvage electronic components for their devices.
Their UNSW team is today part of Bionic Vision Australia and leads the development of the wide-view device, the first of two prototypes aimed at restoring vision in people with degenerative retinal conditions.
The key feature of the device is an implant with 98 electrodes, which will stimulate surviving nerve cells in the retina – a layer of tissue at the back of the eye that converts light into electrical signals and vision.
With the bionic eye, images captured by a camera are processed by an external unit, such as a smart phone, and then relayed to the implant’s chip. This stimulates the retina, sending electrical signals into the brain where they are decoded as vision.