Researchers at the Illinois Institute of Technology have developed new brain implant technology that aims to help bring sight to the blind. And it landed a grant from the National Institutes of Health to begin clinical trials.
The Illinois Tech research team, led by Philip Troyk, executive director of the school’s Pritzker Institute of Biomedical Science and Engineering, created a wireless visual prosthesis system that’s implanted in a patient’s brain to help restore partial vision to someone who’s lost the ability to see. The team received a $2.5 million grant from the NIH recently as the clinical trial process begins.