Bionic eye, sensitive as human retina, may give sight to millions

A bionic eye that is as sensitive as the human retina could give millions of people the chance to see again -- and will be available in just five years, a study reports. Named EC-EYE -- short for'ElectroChemical EYE' -- the eerie bio-mimetic device is around an inch wide and was built by researchers from Hong Kong and the US. The artificial eyeball creates images by means of an assortment of tiny sensors that mirror the light-detecting photoreceptor cells of its natural counterpart. These are packed into a membrane of aluminium and tungsten that is shaped into a half sphere -- mimicking a human retina. A bionic eye (pictured in this artist's impression) that is as sensitive as the human retina could give millions of people the chance to see again -- and will be available in just five years'Our "biomimetic" eye has a size comparable to a human eye -- a bit more than two cm in diameter,' said paper author and engineer Zhiyong Fan of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.