Stanford’s Light-Powered Eye Chip Restores Sight to the Blind
Stanford Medicine has achieved a medical breakthrough with its PRIMA implant, restoring functional vision to patients previously deemed incurably blind. The wireless chip—smaller than a grain of rice—converts light into neural signals, enabling reading and face recognition in clinical trials.
The system pairs photovoltaic implants with augmented-reality glasses, bypassing damaged photoreceptors entirely. 'It's not correcting eyesight—it's restoring sight for blind people,' says lead researcher Daniel Palanker. The international trial involved institutions from Pittsburgh to Paris, marking a watershed in neuroprosthetics.