Mount Sinai is stepping up its effort to battle blindness.
The medical center has created the Eye and Vision Research Institute, which will focus on finding treatments and cures to maintain vision and reverse blindness.
Experts plan to use the latest medical advancements like ocular imaging, regenerative biology and stem cell research. And doctors say it will all come in handy, because the eye is one of the most complicated parts of the body.
"I think the important thing to understand is that eye and vision research, because the eye is part of the brain, we need to enlist the assistance of researchers outside the vision and opthamology world. We need to bring in neuroscientists geneticists because vision is so complex," said New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai President Dr. James Tsai.
The institute will bring together experts from Mount Sinai's New York Eye and Ear Infirmary with researchers and faculty and the Icahn School of Medicine.