Congratulations to Professor Daniel Palanker of the Stanford University Department of Ophthalmology, School of Medicine, and Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory and Dr. Yannick Le Mer of the Fondation Adophe de Rothschild for winning the prestigious Bartimaeus award, due to their scientific and clinical research on the PRIMA Bionic Vision System, at this year’s Eye and The Chip World Research Conference at the Detroit Institute of Ophthalmology and the Henry Ford Department of Ophthalmology. “The Bartimaeus Award is presented to an investigator who has distinguished him or herself, by prolonged substantial contributions to the progress in the field of Artificial Vision.”

The Paris-based company Pixium Vision is testing the device in five people who have the photoreceptor-destroying disease macular degeneration. At last week’s meeting, Palanker presented videos showing that participants who had been implanted with the prosthesis for about 1 year could recognize objects on a table and read printed or on-screen letters. The artificial vision is good enough to make out the title of a book, Palanker says, though not the words on its pages. His team is now working to shrink the photodiodes—creating finer pixels and sharper vision—without losing too much signal strength.

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