A Form-Fitting Photovoltaic Artificial Retina

Several teams of scientists and engineers have been trying for years to produce a practical retinal prosthesis for people afflicted by a progressive loss of photoreceptor cells. One problem all the researchers face is how to get power and data to a retinal chip that’s implanted at the back of a person’s eye. Some groups’ implants, such as those from the University of Southern California’s Doheny Eye Institute and an MIT-Harvard team get their power and data from RF signals beamed in from the outside, while other groups, including one at the University Eye Hospital in T?ºbingen, Germany, are working on getting the data as light entering the eye using RF energy to beam in the power. But a team from Stanford University has been working on what might seem like the obvious solution: using light entering the eye for both power and data