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Towards a Smart Bionic Eye: AI-Powered Artificial Vision for the Treatment of Incurable Blindness

Award Number: DP2LM014268
ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE
OPDIV: NIH
AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY
AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 09/19/2022
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 08/31/2025

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Towards a Smart Bionic Eye: AI-Powered Artificial Vision for the Treatment of Incurable Blindness - Towards a Smart Bionic Eye: AI-Powered Artificial Vision for the Treatment of Incurable Blindness How can we return a functional form of sight to people who are living with incurable blindness? Despite recent advances in gene and stem cell therapies are showing great promise, there are no effective treatments for many people blinded by severe degeneration or damage to the retina, the optic nerve, or cortex. In such cases, an electronic visual prosthesis (“bionic eye”) may be the only option. However, the quality of current prosthetic vision is still rudimentary and does not differ much across different device technologies. A major outstanding challenge is translating electrode stimulation into a code that the brain can understand. Rather than aiming to one day restore natural vision with visual prostheses, we might be better off thinking about how to create practical and useful artificial vision. Specifically, a visual prosthesis has the potential to provide visual augmentations through the means of artificial intelligence (AI) based scene understanding, tailored to specific real-world tasks that are known to affect the quality of life of people who are blind (e.g., face recognition, outdoor navigation, self-care). The goal of this proposal is thus to address fundamental questions at the intersection of neuroscience, computer science, and human-computer interaction that will enable the development of a Smart Bionic Eye; that is, a visual neuroprosthesis that functions as an AI-powered visual aid by providing visual augmentations to support specific everyday tasks. To enable such a technology, we first need to 1) understand how visual prostheses interact with the human visual system to shape perception, 2) identify visual augmentation strategies that best support specific real-world tasks, and 3) develop a prototyping system that allows us to validate as well as iteratively improve upon our augmentation strategies with the bionic eye recipient in the loop. This work will further our understanding of how brain stimulation leads to perception, and the insights gained from identifying optimal visual augmentation strategies may be broadly applicable to different visual aids and sensory substitution devices, therefore potentially benefitting both people who are blind and people with low vision. Last but not least, the ability of a visual prosthesis to support everyday tasks might make the difference between abandoned technology and a widely adopted next-generation neuroprosthetic device.


Issue Date FY	Funding FY	Legal Entity Name	Legal Entity Address	Legal Entity City	Legal Entity State	Legal Entity Zip Code	Legal Entity COUNTY	Legal Entity COUNTRY	Assistance Listing	Award Code	Budget Year	Action Date	Action Type	Action Amount

Issue Date FY: 2026 ( Subtotal = $0 )
2026	2022	UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA	3227 CHEADLE HALL	SANTA BARBARA	CA	93106	SANTA BARBARA	USA	Medical Library Assistance	000	1	3/24/2026	NEW	$0
														Subtotal = $0

Issue Date FY: 2025 ( Subtotal = $741,386 )
2025	2025	UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA	3227 CHEADLE HALL	SANTA BARBARA	CA	93106	SANTA BARBARA	USA	Trans-NIH Research Support	000	2	9/12/2025	EXTENSION WITH OR WITHOUT FUNDS	$741,386
														Subtotal = $741,386

Issue Date FY: 2023 ( Subtotal = $0 )
2023	2022	UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA	3227 CHEADLE HALL	SANTA BARBARA	CA	93106	SANTA BARBARA	USA	Medical Library Assistance	000	1	1/9/2023	NEW	$0
														Subtotal = $0

Issue Date FY: 2022 ( Subtotal = $1,250,136 )
2022	2022	UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA	3227 CHEADLE HALL	SANTA BARBARA	CA	93106	SANTA BARBARA	USA	Medical Library Assistance	000	1	9/19/2022	NEW	$1,250,136
														Subtotal = $1,250,136

Grand Total All Awards = $1,991,522

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Towards a Smart Bionic Eye: AI-Powered Artificial Vision for the Treatment of Incurable Blindness

Award Number: DP2LM014268

ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE

OPDIV: NIH

AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY

AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 09/19/2022

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 08/31/2025

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