International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887) Volume 69– No.18, May 2013 7 The Bionic Eye - “Ray of Hope” – A Review Prakash Chandra Bharti PG Student JUET Guna (MP), India Ashutosh PG Student JUET Guna (MP), India Ranu Gupta Lecturer JUET Guna (MP), India ABSTRACT Among all the five senses the eye has highest priority, it gives vision to us but there are millions of people whose vision is not perfect but their eyes can be corrected with the help of glasses. And millions of people who are unable to see the beauty of nature. They are perfectly blind. The glasses won’t help those who are completely blind. There is no alternative way by which they can see without eyes because the eye is the only mechanism which act in between the outer world and the brain. This means the eye can convert the visual signal to an electronic signal which is understandable by our brain. Now the technology has been given many pathways for the mankind. As technology has improved up to an extent where the integration of engineering with the medical sciences become possible. Now a day the whole human body can be controlled using electronic chip. We have seen that the prosthetics have played important role in restoring the damaged parts of the body like limbs, heart, kidney, pancreas etc. But in case of human eyes the visual signals can be captured by other means and transferred to the human brain this is the possible way by which the vision can be restored. That can be done by the help of bionic eye or artificial eye. The devices are designed to mimic the retina or the function of the human eye. There are several methods like chips can be developed to mimic the function of the retina and this chip can be embedded into the eye by the help of microsurgery. Now the scientist made it possible to integrate the electronics and engineering with the biotechnology that provide the artificial vision. In this process of bionic eye development all have played an important role in the development of the device, whether a biomedical, computer, electronics, mechanical or any other. This bionic eye has the ray of hope for the blind. Development of this device adds life to the blind people around the world. General Terms Bionic eye, electronic eye. Keywords Keywords are your own designated keywords which can be used for easy location of the manuscript using any search engines. 1. INTRODUCTION In this paper the various methods for the restoration of vision have been presented. As we all know that there is no replacement for the human sight because the artificial vision can be incomparable to that of the human eye. For the engineers and scientist belonging to the community of engineering there is no frontier where we cannot conquer. As the scientist and engineers are correlated scientist do research and give birth to the ideas and our engineers put the life into their ideas. There are many fields where the scientist and engineers have created a wave. If we talk about the robotics then the artificial intelligence played an important role. Likewise there have been possibility of development of bionic Eye and that device replace the functionality of the human eye. The study and development in the field of bionic eye is very new but it is quite successful and it restores the vision to the people who have lost their vision for their lifetime. The bionic eye mimics the original functionality of the human eye by stimulating the visual nerve which is activated by the electrical impulse. For simulating the electronic eye a small retinal implant [4-5] can be implanted in the human eye and a device is attached to the human body that implant receive the radio signal and transfer it to the brain through the optical nerve. There are several research have been done and the research has been already in progress earlier the photo detectors have been made based on silicon and called as artificial silicon retina. But the exhibits harmful effects on the human body and reacts with the fluid filled with the eye. So the scientist has developed a new material based on tiny ceramic photocells and restore 2the human vision up to an extent. 2. ANATOMY OF HUMAN EYE Before the study of the artificial eye one should have the knowledge of natural eye there are several parts of the human eye [1-8]. Like cornea, pupil, iris, lens, ciliary body, cilliary muscle, aqueous humour, vitreous humour, visual axis, zonules, fovea, scalera, retina, choroid, macula, optic nerve as shown in the diagram below: Figure 1. Parts of Human Eye Cornea: The white transparent part of the human eye in the front is called as cornea that covers the iris, pupil and anterior chamber. The cornea has nerve endings which are sensitive to the temperature, touch, chemical etc. Pupil: The dark circular opening at the center of the iris of the eye, varying with the size to regulate the amount of light entering into the eye. It appears black. It is very much similar to that of the aperture in the camera.