Paper 13300-38
Paper 13300-38
Prosthetic vision in patients blinded by retinal degeneration (Invited Paper)
26 January 2025 • 11:15 AM - 11:35 AM PST | Moscone Center, Room 156 (South Upper Mezz)
Abstract
Retinal degenerative diseases lead to blindness due to loss of photoreceptors, while neurons in the inner retinal layers are largely preserved, albeit with some rewiring, which provides an opportunity to reintroduce visual information by direct stimulation of the second- and third-order retinal neurons. Several systems have been developed for electrical, optogenetic and ultrasonic stimulation of the retina and of visual cortex, and some of them have been tested clinically. I will review the current state of the field, including the recent clinical studies of a subretinal photovoltaic implant, where patients impaired by age-related macular degeneration regained their ability to read with acuity matching the 100 um pixel size: 20/400 without electronic zoom and up to 20/63 with zoom. I will also discuss the next-generation implant with 20 um pixels, which reached the natural resolution limit in rats (28 um) and may improve the prosthetic visual acuity in human patients up to 5-fold.
Presenter
Stanford Univ. (United States)
Daniel Palanker is a Professor of Ophthalmology and, by courtesy, of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. He received PhD in Applied Physics in 1994 from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and postdoctoral training in Physics at Stanford University in 1996-98.
Dr. Palanker studies interactions of electric field with biological cells and tissues, and develops optical and electronic technologies for diagnostic, therapeutic, surgical and prosthetic applications, primarily in ophthalmology. In the field of electro-neural interfaces, he is working on photovoltaic retinal prosthesis for restoration of sight and on other implants for electronic control of organs. In the field of optics, he develops interferometric imaging of physiological signals for non-invasive and label-free imaging of neural signaling in-vivo.
Several of his developments are in clinical practice: PlasmaBlade (Medtronic), PASCAL ocular scanning laser (Iridex), Fs Laser Cataract system Catalys (J&J).