BIONICGOGGLES

Reported by : Shalini Dey Biomedical Engineering 3rd year, 6th sem Roll : 10903113016

Overview What is it? History Who are the target people? The Device and its Components How it Works.. Image Processing Case Studies Conclusion Future Promises Reference

What is it ? The Bionic Goggles are high-tech glasses that allow the legally blind to see.

It also

help those

who are normally confined to their homes to navigate shopping centers or simply walk to the corner shop and read bus numbers. smart spectacles use tiny cameras and a pocket computer to alert wearers to objects and people ahead.

HistoryThe founder of this technology is a Canadian engineer Conrad Lewis. He did it for his two sisters, who were legally blind due to Stargardt’s Disease. There was nothing that could be done medically, but Conrad believed he could develop an engineering solution that would restore their sight.Lewis started working for this in 2007, beginning his quest with a small team of 20 researchers and engineering developers.Now, he is profoundly known as the founder of the Ottawa-

based company , eSight Corporation.His idea and hard work are now helping many legally blind people to see.

Who are the target people? According to the World Health Organization (Arditi &

Rosenthal,1998), when the best-corrected vision in the better eye is in the following ranges, it is considered:Sl. No.

Range of Vision Description

1. 20/30 to 20/60 near-normal vision or mild vision loss2. 20/70 to 20/160 moderate visual impairment, or moderate low

vision3. 20/200 to 20/400 severe visual impairment, or severe low vision4. 20/500 to

20/1000profound visual impairment, or profound low vision

5. Below 20/1000 near-total visual impairment, or near total blindness

6. No light perception

total visual impairment, or total blindnessLegal blindness is the inability to achieve better than 20/200 vision with spectacles on –even with visual aids, a legally blind person could not see from 20 feet an object which someone with perfect vision could see from 200 feet. Some legally blind people can see a small amount, but their eyes do not pick up enough for their brains to recognize what is being seen, and it is these people whose lives can be turned around with these invention.

The Device and Its Components Device has a video camera mounted on the frame of the

glasses. Software projects images of nearby objects to the see-through

displays The glasses don't replace lost vision but assist with spatial

awareness

How it works....

Image Processing

Image captured by the camera, processed for magnification, edge enhancement and contrast enhancement and projected from the video goggles onto the parafoveal region of the retina. Additional smart processing for dynamic magnification in the fovea is enabled by eye tracking.

Case Studies :Iain Cairns, 43, tried out the glasses in Oxford's Covered Market. He was diagnosed with the inherited eye condition choroideremia at around the age of 12. On having the glasses fitted, Iain reacted: 'Ooh, I can … I can see your face. It's, er, like suddenly going into … Like the Lord of the Rings when he puts the ring on. And sees things in a new way … That tablecloth is looking lovely. It's getting the pattern of the tablecloth … It's like I’ve wandered into an 80s pop video.Everyone has cool A-ha drawings round them. . It's now much

more of a scene with several people in.

Lyn Oliver, 70, of Faringdon in Oxfordshire has a guide dog, Jess, to help her get around. She was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa in her early 20s, an eye disease which gradually leads to loss of vision and blindness.

Lyn has tried out the bionic glasses and describes how they could help when out with her guide dog: 'If Jess stops, the glasses can tell me if she's stopped because there's a kerb, there's something on the floor or it's road works, and it'll give me a sense of which way she may go around the obstacle.' Lyn relates how on one occasion, when she was without a guide dog for six months last year and just using a cane, she walked into a car. 'Some people insist on parking on the pavement, and then swear at you because you've walked into their Precious car. There was just too much traffic noise for me to detect it there. With the glasses on, I would have seen the car.’

Conclusion Blindness and visual impairment affect people in

different degrees. moderate visual impairment and severe visual impairment can be coupled together under “low vision”. People who suffer from low vision may find everyday activities such as reading, writing, cooking, and shopping to be challenging even after regular corrective lenses.

  This glasses help visually impaired to “see” better,

using technology normally found in smatphones and video game accessories, these high-tech specs make use of camera, face tracking software and sensors.

  Different colors could represent different things,

such as people or objects whereas brightness could convey proximity. This glasses also provide audio feedback played through an earpiece.

These glasses in short allowed people to be more independent.

Future Promises Currently, the team is working to expand the capabilities of its eyewear.

In its current form, the device already addresses a large range of vision problems, but software enhancements will extend that even further.

Further advancement of the semitransparent video goggles with low weight and ergonomic design will minimize the social awkwardness of the electronic eyewear.

Higher resolution, high brightness and contrast would allow comfortable viewing.

Advanced image processing, and especially image recognition, are other very promising directions of future research.

Advancements in the field of three-dimensional cameras will help encode depth information and provide additional warnings about the obstacles.

Similar algorithms for image simplification and enhanced scarcity should help with optical approaches to restoration of sight. Better understanding of pathways of retinal and cortical processing of artificial vision will help to optimize the algorithms of image presentation in these vision restoration approaches.

Reference World Health Organization (2009) Visual impairment and blindness - Fact SheetN°282. Available at: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs282/en/ Blind World Magazine (2006) Breaking the chains of paternalism. Available online at : http://home.earthlink.net/~blindworld/NEWS/6-06-14-02.htm http://tvstjournal.org/doi/full/10.1167/tvst.3.7.9 http://tvstjournal.org/doi/full/10.1167/tvst.3.7.9 54 www.esighteyewear.com http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2659993/Smart-glasses-BLIND-Device-transforms-world-outlines-shapes-help-partially-sighted-navigate.html#ixzz41STsIgFh http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2011285/Hi-tech-glasses-help-blind-again.html#ixzz41SXAfmmt

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