A new bionic eye has helped a woman, 72, from Honolulu to see again after being blind for more than two years. It took the elderly Japanese woman four hours undergoing the procedure at the Eye Surgery Center of Hawaii on Tuesday to become the first person to receive the implant in the Asia pacific region.

According to CBS reports, the treatment is only beneficial for those who have the hereditary disease, retinitis pigmentosa which causes vision impairment. According to Dr. Gregg Kokame, who performed the operation, the woman will begin to see motion and different shades of grey with the bionic eye.

The device has already been granted the approval by the food and drug administration and it costs $144,000. Before eye surgeons went ahead with the surgery, the woman was able to perceive some light and otherwise totally blind.

A microelectrode array was implanted to the surface of the woman's retina. It is wirelessly connected to a camera which is connected to a pair of glasses. The woman will not be able see any color or close details, but the advancement in the technology may someday help her have a broader range of vision. It's just a matter of two weeks and the woman will be able to use her new device. She is currently healing from her surgery.

Dr. Mark Humayan, who invented bionic eye implant, said the device will one day help more patients. "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", said Humayan.