Eighty-Five Percent of Improved Optical Power Delivery to Epiretinal Prostheses Using Rigid Body Compensation Algorithm

Abstract

Vision impairment caused by degenerative retinal pathologies such as age-related macular degeneration can be treated using retinal implants. Such devices receive power and data using cables passing through a permanent surgical incision in the eye wall (sclera), which increases the risk to patients and surgical costs. A recently developed retinal implant design eliminates the necessity of the implant cable using a photonic power converter (PPC), which receives optical power and data through the pupil and is directed by an ellipsoidal reflector and micro-electromechanical mirror. We present a misalignment compensation algorithm model that accounts for rigid-body motions of the reflector relative to the eye and applies the correction to the mirror coordinates in the presence of angular misalignment of the reflector. We demonstrate that up to 85% of the nominal optical power can be delivered to the implant with axial reflector misalignments up to 30 deg using the compensation algorithm.