Bionic eye helps Australian woman see light for the first time in 20 years

Two decades ago, Dianne Ashworth, 54, lost her sight to a condition called retinitis pigments.

After twenty years of living with near-total blindness, the Australian woman has seen flashes of light and shapes thanks to a bionic eye implant prototype.

"I didn't know what to expect, but all of a sudden, I could see a little flash…it was amazing. Every time there was stimulation there was a different shape that appeared in front of my eye," Ashworth said in a statement.

"The bionic eye, developed by Australian researchers, involves the insertion of a device fitted with 24 electrodes into the retina of vision-impaired patients. The electrodes send electrical impulses to nerve cells in the eye, a process which occurs naturally in people with normal vision," the Telegraph reports.

The device restores "mild vision," Reuters reports, allowing patients to pick up major contracts and edges. Researchers are hoping to develop a vision processor that would enable images to be assembled using flashes of light so that blind patients can achieve independent mobility.

Bionic Vision Australia's Professor David Penington said he believes the eye will eventually enable "useful vision," but that "much still needs to be done in using the current implant to 'build' images for Ms. Ashworth."

"We are working with Ms. Ashworth to determine exactly what she sees each time the retina is stimulated," Professor Rob Shepherd, from the Bionics Institute, said in a statement.

"The team is looking for consistency of shapes, brightness, size and location of flashes to determine how the brain interprets this information."

Dr. Penny Allen, the surgeon who led the transplant team, says the implantation procedure is simple and can be easily taught to surgeons worldwide.

"This is a world first — we implanted a device in this position behind the retina, demonstrating the viability of our approach," Allen said.

"We didn't want to have a device that was too complex in a surgical approach that was very difficult to learn," Allen told Reuters. "What we're going to be doing is restoring a type of vision which is probably going to be black and white, but what we're hoping to do for these patients who are severely visually impaired is to give them mobility."

The World Health Organization reports that 39 million people worldwide are blind, and nearly 250 million are impaired by extremely poor vision.

In 2006, 816,250 Canadians aged 15 and older reported some type of seeing limitation. The Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) estimates it will have 187,000 registered clients by 2015.