Design and validation of a foldable and photovoltaic wide-field epiretinal prosthesis
Retinal prostheses have been developed to fight blindness in people affected by outer retinal layer dystrophies. To date, few hundred patients have received a retinal implant. Inspired by intraocular lenses, we have designed a foldable and photovoltaic wide-field epiretinal prosthesis (named POLYRETINA) capable of stimulating wireless retinal ganglion cells. Here we show that within a visual angle of 46.3 degrees, POLYRETINA embeds 2215 stimulating pixels, of which 967 are in the central area of 5 mm, it is foldable to allow implantation through a small scleral incision, and it has a hemispherical shape to match the curvature of the eye. We demonstrate that it is not cytotoxic and respects optical and thermal safety standards; accelerated ageing shows a lifetime of at least 2 years. POLYRETINA represents significant progress towards the improvement of both visual acuity and visual field with the same device, a current challenging issue in the field.
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Ferlauto, L., Airaghi Leccardi, M. J. I., Chenais, N. A. L., Gilliéron, S. C. A., Vagni, P., Bevilacqua, M., Wolfensberger, T. J., Sivula, K., Ghezzi, D., & Ferlauto, L. (2018). Design and validation of a foldable and photovoltaic wide-field epiretinal prosthesis. Nature Communications, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-03386-7
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