Seeing Machine Helps Blind See Pictures
Published: Jan 29, 2009Using her prototype “seeing machine,” Elizabeth Goldring can take pictures and see them — with her blind eye.
After more than 20 years of work, Goldring, a senior fellow at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies and her colleagues have designed a portable device that allows people with visual impairments to watch videos, access the internet, view photographs, or just see the face of a friend.
Her work started when she lost the vision in both of her eyes and doctors at the Schepens Eye Research Institute in Boston used a scanning laser ophthalmoscope, or SLO, to determine if she had any healthy retina left. The machine, which costs over US$100,000, projected images directly onto the retina of the eye, bypassing the hemorrhages contributing to her blindness.
“Technicians projected stick figures onto my retinas and I could see some of those stick figures,” she said of the experience. Goldring then asked them if they could write the word “sun,” which she could also see. “I was amazed. It was the first word I’d seen for months.”
After her visit, she contacted and worked with the inventor of the SLO, hoping to reduce the size and cost of the device. That research yielded a $4,000 desktop model that allowed the blind to see black-and-white images. Soon after, a desktop model was created that allowed for color images to be seen. Goldring admits that version doesn’t work well, but it paved the way for the current prototype.
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