'Bionic eye' implant offers hope to the blind | Bangkok Post: news

For a man whose view of the world has slowly faded to black over 30 years, a device that allows him to see flashes of light has enkindled his hope of one day gazing upon his grandson's face.

Elias Konstantopoulus puts on his bionic eye glasses at his home in Glen Burnie, Maryland. Konstantopoulus suffers from retinosa pigmentosa, a genetic eye condition that leads to incurable blindness, yet working with Johns Hopkins University he has been implanted with a microchip and the glasses that enable him to distinguish light and dark.

A career electrician who grew up in Greece and came to the United States as a young man, Elias Konstantopoulos first noticed his vision getting poorer when at age 43 he absentmindedly tried on a relative's eyeglasses and found he could see more clearly with them than without.