With an ultimate goal of restoring sight, their research is a collaboration that builds on Dr. Weiland’s experience with retinal prosthesis and Dr. Chestek’s work with carbon fiber neural electrodes, to create a sophisticated electronic device designed to stimulate the retina and restore usable vision for people whose photoreceptors have degenerated.
A team of U-M BME researchers, led by Jim Weiland, Professor, Biomedical Engineering and Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, and Cindy Chestek, Professor, Biomedical Engineering, Robotics, & Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, and Associate Chair for Research in Biomedical Engineering (College of Engineering), has received a $2.3M National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant focused on developing an advanced, high-resolution retinal prosthesis for the treatment of blindness.
With an ultimate goal of restoring sight, their research is a collaboration that builds on Dr. Weiland’s experience with retinal prosthesis and Dr. Chestek’s work with carbon fiber neural electrodes, to create a sophisticated electronic device designed to stimulate the retina and restore usable vision for people whose photoreceptors have degenerated.
Learning from Previous Endeavors
In the early 2000s, spurred by clinical work from the 1980s and 1990s, several companies ventured into the commercial development of retinal prostheses. These devices, designed to electrically stimulate the retina, aimed to recreate a sense of vision for individuals with visual impairments. Despite their FDA approvals and the implantation of devices in approximately 500 patients worldwide, these early attempts fell short in providing a level of vision that could be considered useful in daily life. The technology at the time could not achieve high enough resolution, leaving users with limited perceptual capabilities—such as distinguishing dark objects on a light background or identifying a door frame—insufficient benchmarks for meaningful quality-of-life improvements.
“We are building off the findings from the clinical studies with commercial devices. These were generally safe and capable of creating visual perceptions, but the devices used older technology that could not precisely stimulate the retina. Thus, the vision that was provided was of low resolution and only useful in specific circumstances. The patients were still blind.” Dr. Weiland said.
Leveraging Carbon Fiber Technology
Today, Drs. Weiland and Chestek are using lessons of the past while integrating contemporary advancements in neural interfaces. Their approach draws significantly from Dr. Chestek’s work with carbon fibers, which offers a novel solution to the resolution issues that hampered earlier devices. Unlike previous electrodes, carbon fibers are incredibly minute—comparable in size to capillaries—which enables them to sit closer to the neurons they need to stimulate. This heightened proximity ensures a more precise and high-density stimulation that could vastly improve visual resolution.
“The beauty of the carbon fibers is that they’re very, very tiny. They can get up close and personal with the cells that you actually want to stimulate, maintaining this close interaction over time due to their biocompatibility,” explained Dr. Chestek. This could mean the difference between seeing vague shapes and potentially recognizing faces or reading text—an extraordinary leap forward.
A Strategic Investment: Pursuing Transformational Outcomes
Supported by the NIH grant over four years, the team will conduct preclinical testing that it expects will yield significant advances. Though clinical applications are beyond this project’s current scope, the foundational research may provide the groundwork for future prosthetic devices capable of providing truly useful artificial vision.
“We aim to deliver more than just functional outcomes; we strive for practical and life-enhancing vision. The ultimate goal is to transition from basic artificial vision to something that offers higher resolution and thus, significantly greater utility for the users,” said Dr. Weiland.
Kwoon Wong, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology; David Zacks, M.D. Ph.D., Edna H. Perkiss Research Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, and Professor, Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences; and Parag Patil, M.D., Ph.D., Michigan Neuroscience Institute Affiliate Associate Professor, Neurosurgery, Neurology, Anesthesiology, and Biomedical Engineering, and Associate Chair, Clinical and Translational Research Faculty, Neuroscience Graduate Program are co-investigators on this project.