The chip is as big as a microSIM card cut in half. It's as thick as a human hair. They insert it under the retina in an hour and a half, then wait a month for the eye to adjust to the retinal implant. When they turn on the glasses for the first time, some cry. Others remain silent, staring at a letter they haven't seen in years. Sheila IrvineA British patient described her blindness as "two black discs in front of her eyes." Now she can read again. Not perfectly: black and white, blurry, narrow field of vision. But she can read.
The study published in the New England Journal of Medicine confirms what 27 out of 32 patients are already experiencing: a photovoltaic retinal implant can restore sight to those who have lost it to advanced macular degeneration.
How does the retinal implant work BEFORE?
The device is called PRIMA (Photovoltaic Retina Implant Micro Array) and is the result of twenty years of research conducted by the physicist Daniel Palanker of Stanford UniversityA tiny, 2-millimeter-square, just 30 micrometers thick, wireless square is surgically implanted under the central retina through a vitrectomy. No cables, no external batteries. The chip houses 378 photosensitive pixels arranged in a honeycomb pattern that function like a microscopic solar panel.
But the chip alone isn't enough. A pair of special glasses equipped with a front-facing video camera and an infrared projector is needed. The video camera captures visual scenes, the pocket computer (which the patient wears on his belt) processes them, and the projector transforms them into infrared light patterns that are projected directly onto the implanted chip. When the light hits the pixels, they generate electrical impulses that stimulate the surviving retinal neurons, completely bypassing the dead photoreceptors. The information then travels through the optic nerve to the brain, which interprets it as images.
It's like a simultaneous translation system: external reality is converted into infrared, infrared into electricity, electricity into neural signals. Three steps to bypass biological failure.
Retinal Implant: The European Study That Changes Everything
The PRIMAvera clinical study involved 38 patients over the age of sixty in 17 hospitals spread across France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. All affected by geographic atrophy, the most severe form of age-related macular degeneration: photoreceptors in the center of the retina dead, central vision gone, only a thin edge of peripheral vision surviving.
Coordinated by Frank Holz ofUniversity of Bonn, the trial produced numbers that speak for themselves. Of the 32 patients who completed twelve months of monitoring, 81% achieved clinically relevant improvements in visual acuity. On average, those who received the retinal implant he managed to read five more lines on the standard optometric chart. Some patients, who before the surgery could not even distinguish the presence of the table, have recovered an astonishing reading ability.
Mahi Muqit, professor at theUCL Institute of Ophthalmology and consultant of the Moorfields Eye Hospital of London, led the British section of the study. "This represents a new era in the history of computer vision," he said.
“Blind patients are actually able to recover significant central vision, something never achieved before.”
What patients really see
Vision is not normal. Images appear black and white with a yellowish tinge, blurry, and with a narrow field of vision. The current resolution allows the patient to distinguish shapes, contrasts, and movements. Reading is possible, as mentioned, albeit slowly. The glasses have a zoom function to enlarge text and adjust contrast. Some patients describe the experience as "seeing through a narrow window."
Sheila Irvine, the patient I told you about at the beginning of the article, said that the more hours she spends using the device, the more things she can do: read labels on jars, complete crossword puzzles, immerse herself in reading again. Of course, the process requires months of intensive rehabilitation. The brain must learn to interpret completely new visual cues, like a musician switching from the piano to the drums: the notes are still the same, but the instrument works differently.
As I was already telling you in November 2024, the first results from the PRIMA chip were showing promising signs. Now the data confirms: it works.
When will the retinal implant be available?
Science Corporation, the Californian company that acquired the technology from the French Pixium Vision After its bankruptcy in 2024, it submitted the application for CE certification for the European market in June 2025. If approved, the device could be available by 2026. In the United States, negotiations are already underway with the Food and Drug Administration.
Palanker has already developed an improved version of the chip with higher resolution, currently being tested on animals. More pixels, sharper images, a wider field of view. The technology is progressing rapidly.
But there are limits. As highlighted by Nurse TimesThe procedure produced "adverse events" in 95% of cases: increased intraocular pressure, retinal tears, and bleeding. These problems were manageable and resolved within two months in the majority of patients, but they were not trivial.
The ideal candidate is someone who has completely lost central vision due to dry macular degeneration, with no other eye conditions, and has developed significant vision at a young age. Unfortunately, this still represents a small portion of the 5 million people in the world affected by this condition.
Retinal implant: the long march of artificial vision
Twenty years of research to achieve blurry black-and-white vision. It may not seem like much. But for those who lived with two black disks before their eyes, distinguishing a letter is a cosmic event. Technology doesn't restore what was lost: it builds something new, different, hybrid. It's not the biological eye that starts working again. It's an electronic system that speaks the language of the brain.
And maybe that's the point. We're not "fixing" vision. We're inventing another way of seeing.
