Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia.
J Neural Eng. 2013 Feb;10(1):011002. doi: 10.1088/1741-2560/10/1/011002. Epub 2013 Jan 21.
Visual prosthetics is an expanding subfield of functional electrical stimulation which has gained increased interest recently in light of new advances in treatments and technology. These treatments and technology represent a major improvement over prior art, but are still subject to a host of limitations which are dependent on the manner in which one approaches the topic of visual prosthetics. These limitations pose new research challenges whose solutions are directly applicable to the well-being of blind individuals everywhere. In this review, we will outline and critically compare major current approaches to visual prosthetics, and in particular retinal prosthetics. Then, we will engage in an in-depth discussion of the limitations imposed by current technology, physics, and the underlying biology of the retina to highlight several of the challenges currently facing researchers.
视觉假体是功能电刺激领域不断发展的一个分支，最近由于治疗和技术的新进展，引起了越来越多的关注。这些治疗和技术与以往的技术相比有了很大的改进，但仍然存在许多限制，这些限制取决于人们研究视觉假体的方式。这些限制带来了新的研究挑战，其解决方案直接适用于世界各地盲人的福祉。在这篇综述中，我们将概述和批判性地比较当前主要的视觉假体方法，特别是视网膜假体。然后，我们将深入讨论当前技术、物理学和视网膜的基础生物学所带来的限制，以突出目前研究人员面临的一些挑战。
