Abstract
The Detroit Institute of Ophthalmology has hosted three world congresses on artificial vision. These congresses, which are known as the Eye and the Chip meetings, have been held every other year, and have become the collegial center of the visual neuro-prosthetic device world. These meetings have advanced the development of this field because they have been designed to focus only on this one topic, have allowed ample time for scientific scrutiny, and have promoted social exchange among all of the research teams. We are proud that for each of our meetings we have been able to provide full financial support for travel to two researchers from every visual prosthetic group in the world. Our intent is to be all-inclusive; our belief is that the field will mature more rapidly if all relevant voices can be given a forum to present and defend their ideas.
Presenters at the meeting in 2006 were invited to submit full papers for review and publication in the Journal of Neural Engineering. This issue brings together 15 of those papers and provides a comprehensive account of the meeting.
When we, the co-editors of this special issue, and the organizers of the Eye and the Chip world congresses, first considered the possibility of these meetings, there were under a dozen initiatives around the world devoting major resources, personnel, and attention to a possible visual neuro-prosthetic device.
There are now at least 23 such initiatives around the world and we are aware of several other programs that are in the formative or `rumor' stage.
We, as both editors and organizers, are gratified by the growth of this promising field of research. The goal of restoring vision to the blind with artificial devices is lofty. The engineering and biological problems that must be overcome to realize our collective dream are markedly complex, and the financial challenges to develop new devices and proceed through the process of clinical human testing are monumental, especially for projects of this type that are almost always born within an academic environment. The explosion of interest in our field has created an energized critical mass of researchers, which should move forward the day when visual prosthetic devices will be considered as viable treatment options for the blind.
Accompanying this editorial is a world map which clearly underlines the worldwide nature of this endeavor (figure 1, see pdf).
The Eye and the Chip World Congress 2008 will again be held in Detroit, USA (June 12–14, 2008).