Development of fully-implantable retinal prosthesis system realizing the same visual information processing as human vision

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15H01812
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Medical systems
• Research Institution: Tohoku University
• Principal Investigator: TANAKA Tetsu 東北大学, 医工学研究科, 教授 (40417382)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 福島 誉史 東北大学, 工学研究科, 准教授 (10374969) ; 富田 浩史 岩手大学, 理工学部, 教授 (40302088) ; 清山 浩司 長崎総合科学大学, 工学部, 准教授 (60412722)
• Co-Investigator(Renkei-kenkyūsha): KOYANAGI Mitsumasa 東北大学, 未来科学技術共同研究センター, 名誉教授 (60205531) ; SUGANO Eriko 岩手大学, 理工学部, 准教授 (70375210) ; KINO Hisashi 東北大学, 学際科学フロンティア研究所, 助教 (10633406)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 人工網膜 / 三次元集積回路 / 医用システム / 生体医工学

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In order to restore visual sensation of blind patients such as age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa, a fully-implantable retinal prosthesis have been developed in this research. The fully implantable retinal prosthesis consists of an intraocular and extraocular units. The intraocular unit has a coupling coil, a stimulus electrode array, and a 3-D stacked retinal prosthesis chip. The 3-D stacked retinal prosthesis chip is composed of a photoreceptor chip and a stimulus current generator chip. In this research, power dissipation of the stimulus current generator chip with an edge enhancement function successfully decreased to 62% due to no idling function. Other functions such as dark current compensation and temperature compensation were implemented into the circuit. A transparent stimulus electrode using Al-doped ZnO was successfully developed and showed appropriate CIC and electrical impedance values, which leads to x3 photoelectric conversion performance.

Free Research Field

半導体工学・神経工学