A Miniature Telescope Implanted in the Eye

VisionCare Ophthalmic Technologies, a biotech start-up, has developed a tiny telescope that has can implanted into the eyes of people suffering from macular degeration:

Last week, an advisory panel for the Food and Drug Administration unanimously recommended that the agency approve the implant. Clinical trials of the device, which is about the size of a pencil eraser, suggest it can improve vision by about three and a half lines on an eye chart…Once inside the eye, it works like a fixed telephoto lens, acting in conjunction with the cornea to project a magnified image of whatever the wearer is looking at over a large part of the retina. Because only the central parts of the retina are damaged in the disease, magnifying the image on the eye allows the retinal cells outside the macula to detect the object and send that information to the brain.

Link via The Presurfer