MIT poet develops 'seeing machine'

An MIT poet has developed a small, relatively inexpensive "seeing
machine" that can allow people who are blind, or visually challenged
like her, to access the Internet, view the face of a friend, "previsit"
unfamiliar buildings and more.

Recently the machine received
positive feedback from 10 visually challenged people with a range of
causes for their vision loss who tested it in a pilot clinical trial.
The work was reported in Optometry, the Journal of the American
Optometric Association, earlier this year.

The work is led by
Elizabeth Goldring, a senior fellow at MIT's Center for Advanced Visual
Studies. She developed the machine over the last 10 years, in
collaboration with more than 30 MIT students and some of her personal
eye doctors. The new device costs about $4,000, low compared to the
$100,000 price tag of its inspiration, a machine Goldring discovered
through her eye doctor.

Goldring's adventures at the intersection
of art and high technology began with a visit to her doctor, Lloyd
Aiello, head of the Beetham Eye Institute of the Joslin Diabetes
Center. At the time, Goldring was blind. (Surgeries have since restored
vision in one eye).

To better examine her eyes, Aiello asked
her to go to the Schepens Eye Research Institute at Harvard, where
technicians peered into her eyes with a diagnostic device known as a
scanning laser opthalmoscope, or SLO. With the machine they projected a
simple image directly onto the retina of one eye, past the hemorrhages
within the eye that contributed to her blindness. The idea was to
determine whether she had any healthy retina left.

It turns out
that she did, and was able to see the image -- a stick figure of a
turtle. But the turtle wasn't very interesting, Goldring said. So she
asked if they could write the word "sun" and transmit that through the
SLO. "And I could see it!" she said. "That was the first time in
several months that I'd seen a word, and for a poet that's an
incredible feeling."

She went on to use the device for many other
visual experiences. For example, she developed a "visual language"
consisting of short words that incorporate graphics and symbols that
convey the meaning of words and make them easier to see and read.

But
although the SLO held promise as more than a diagnostic device, it had
serious drawbacks. In addition to the prohibitive cost, the SLO is
large and bulky. Goldring determined to develop a more practical
machine for the broader blind public.

She did so by
collaborating over the past several years with Rob Webb, the machine's
inventor and a senior scientist at the Schepens Eye Research Institute;
Aiello; Dr. Jerry Cavallerano, an optometrist at Joslin; William
Mitchell, former dean of MIT's School of Architecture and Planning and
now a professor in the Program in Media Arts and Sciences; the late
Steve Benton, an acclaimed optical physicist and MIT professor; and
former MIT affiliate James Cain.