A photovoltaic implant in the retina combined with special glasses that link up with the implant electronically significantly improved vision in people with vision loss due to age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine , the authors report that 26 out of 32 patients who were followed up a year after implantation had regained the ability to read.

The implant, known as a photovoltaic retina implant microarray (PRIMA), is a 2mm x 2mm chip that works by detecting infrared light projected into the eye by the linked glasses. The chip is 0.03 mm thick and converts images into electrical pulses that can then be ‘read’ by the brain in a similar way to real biological photoreceptors.

Notably, normal photoreceptors in the eye do not detect infrared l

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