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And The Blind Shall See Again Ever wonder what causes the gradual onset of blindness? While invasive techniques do exist to combat diseases that result in blindness, wouldn’t it be nice if there was some way to deal with these diseases that didn’t involve cutting our eyes open? Well, Professor Shy Shoham and his team at the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Technion felt so—and it seems they are on their way to developing a non-invasive solution to degenerative retinal diseases. So how does this thing work? Without getting too far into the particulars, the retina is to the eye as film is to the camera and degenerative retinal disease causes the eye’s “film” to be less sensitive to light, thus affecting vision. To help the retinal cells regain the necessary sensitivity to light required for vision, light-sensitive algae or bacteria are introduced into the eyes. Using holography, Shoham stimulates the retinal cells with very intense beams of light to specific cells, providing a high-resolution image. The team at the Technion hopes to develop some sort of prosthetic...