[bksvol-discuss] Machine Offers sight to Some Blind People (Web Article)
- From: "Dilsia A. Martinez" <dilsiam@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 17:35:52 -0700 (PDT)
Machine Offers Sight to Some Blind People
By Bjorn Carey
LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 23 May 2006
01:09 pm ET
With her good eye, Elizabeth Goldring can distinguish
between light and dark and see hand movement, but not
individual fingers. She cannot recognize faces or
read.
Goldring is an artist, a poet, and a senior fellow at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for
Advanced Visual Studies. Her vision loss doesn't make
any of these activities easier. She started losing her
vision about 20 years ago. Today, after several
surgeries, she has limited vision in her right eye,
but is blind in the left.
Now Goldring and a team of eye doctors, fellow
researchers, and students have produced a "seeing
machine" that allows the visually challenged to view
the face of a friend, access the Internet, and
"previsit" unfamiliar buildings [example].
Starting from scratch
The project started 10 years ago when, to determine if
Goldring had any healthy retina left, her doctors sent
her to the Schepens Eye Research Institute at Harvard.
Technicians there used a diagnostic device called a
scanning laser opthamaloscope, or SLO, to look into
her eyes.
The SLO projected a simple image of a stick-figure
turtle past the hemorrhages inside her left eye that
contributed to her blindness and directly onto the
retina of one eye. She could see the turtle, but
wanted more, and asked the technicians to project the
word "sun."
"And I could see it," Goldring said. "That was the
first time in several months that I'd seen a word, and
for a poet that's an incredible feeling."
Since then, Goldring has been working with other
vision researchers and engineers to transform the
$100,000 SLO into a more affordable machine. So far,
by dumping some of the diagnostic equipment and
replacing expensive lasers with cheaper light emitting
diodes (LEDs), they have knocked the price down to
$4,000.
The once bulky SLO now fits on a desktop while still
being able to project images, video, and more onto a
person's retina.
"We essentially made the new machine from scratch,"
Goldring said.
Real-time vision
Although still in the early stages of development,
there is potential the machine could deliver real-time
images to its user. Goldring has already successfully
experimented with hooking it up to a video camera. But
packing the whole contraption into a wearable,
portable device could be especially difficult.
It's also possible that delivering real-time
images?which are filled with complex shapes,
movements, and colors?to a visually challenged person
might be too much for them to handle.
"When we tried out the machine, I could see one face
very well, but if more than one face got in the
picture I could see nothing," Goldring told
LiveScience. "It was too much, it was overload. If
you're blind it's easy to get overload on these
things."
Seeing is believing
After miniaturizing the SLO and developing her own
"visual language"?consisting of short words that
incorporate graphics and symbols to convey meaning and
make the image easier to see and read?the next step
was to offer the experience to others who could
benefit.
"My dream, of course, is that it will get out of my
laboratory and into the hands that people who can use
it," Goldring said.
The pilot clinical trial included 10 participants with
20/70 vision or worse in their good eye. Most were
clinically blind, meaning they can only make out the
largest "E" on a standard eye chart, and had lost
their vision from a variety of causes, including
diabetes, macular degeneration, and visual field loss.
Using the modified machine, six of the participants
interpreted all 10 "word-images" correctly. Several
commented that even in its early stages, it was by far
the best visual aid they had used.
"They responded really well to the visual language,"
Goldring said. "One woman told me she would love to
see recipes written that way."
The results from the study, announced today, were
reported earlier this year in Optometry, the Journal
of the American Optometric Association.
Mass appeal
A device such as this could open doors to new,
unfamiliar places, which the visually challenged are
often terrified of visiting, Goldring said.
"There's a fear of missing simple visual cues, steps,
and not being able to decipher elevator buttons," she
said. "Stairs are, of course, quite scary to blind
people."
Fewer than 10 percent of the blind read Braille,
making it difficult to find their way in unfamiliar
places, and directions from well-meaning bystanders
are often inaccurate. Just a peek at the layout of the
new building could be enough to help the blind find
their way.
"If you are visually challenged, if you see something
once using the machine, you remember," Goldring said.
The current model allows the user to travel through a
virtual building using a joystick to move forward,
backward, and sideways to get the lay of the land. The
researchers are currently working on developing a
color version of the machine for a large-scale
clinical trial. The new version will allow the
participants to stroll through a gallery containing
artwork by Goldring.
* How the Human Eye Works
* Nanotech Restores Vision in Hamsters
* Visual Response Restored in Blind Mice
* Brain Power: Mind Control of External Devices
* Nature Inspires Design of New Eyes
* Basketball for the Blind
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