A Japanese woman may regain her sight as she underwent a procedure of bionic eye transplant at the Eye Surgery Center, Hawaii. This makes her the first woman in Asia Pacific Region to undergo this operation.

Bionic eye transplant is effective for those who have eye problem owing to hereditary disease like retinitis pigmentosa which causes vision impairment, reports said.

Dr. Gregg Kokame performed the operation. He said that the woman will now begin to see shades of grey and motions.

Since the patient is an elderly, the procedure was covered by Medicare. The surgery costs $144,000 and has also been approved by U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

During the producer, a microelectrode array was implanted to the surface of the woman's retina. It then connects to a camera which is connected to a pair of glasses. Since the technology is quite new, for now the vision of the lady is limited. The doctors informed that the patient will be able to use her new device after two weeks.

Dr. Mark Humayan developed the bionic eye and hopes that the device will be able to help more and more people in future.

Humayan said "We have hundreds of millions of photo receptors in our eye, hundreds of millions, and with only 60 pixels patients who were completely blind can see large objects, can tell a table from a chair or a knife from a fork or a plate so it?s very exciting to see what the brain is able to fill in."