Goldring said that the advantage of such a display was that it cut out any extraneous stuff in one’s peripheral vision with the image being directly projected onto the retina.

The device, though not wearable and thus unable to aid one in crowded and unfamiliar places would nonetheless help one study color images such as printed words, pictures of people or room layouts. It is useful only for people with some living retina cells. It also enables a study of a three-dimensional computer rendering of a room or public place to familiarise oneself.

The device has been successfully tested on 10 people with limited vision and is indeed a sign of hope for about 1.3 million legally blind Americans. According to Darren Burton, national program associate for technology at the American Foundation for the Blind, in Huntington, West Virginia, other devices aimed to benefit people with limited vision work like a closed-circuit television, capturing an image with a camera and projecting it onto a video screen or video goggles. They do not directly project images onto the retina.

This “seeing machine,” is housed in a box measuring about 12 inches by 6 inches by 6 inches. It has an eyepiece and the picture can be navigated through with a joystick. The manufacturing cost of the device has been estimated to be approximately $4,0000. When plugged into a personal computer, it uses light-emitting diodes to project selected images.

It has been inspired by a medical device called a scanning laser opthalmoscope, which a doctor had used to examine Goldring’s eyes when she lost her vision.

With the prototype now working, Goldring’s next hurdle is to build a commercial version of this “seeing machine”.

Scott Malon