Simulation of the visual perception in retinal prosthesis

一种视网膜假体旨在让盲人恢复视力。为了做到这一点，一个外部摄像头捕捉视觉场景，并将这些信息发送到位于眼睛内的电极阵列，以直接刺激视网膜。来自电极的电脉冲沿着视神经发送到大脑，并被解读为视觉。许多类型的模式可以用来刺激组成该阵列的不同电极。通常，刺激与相机捕获的图像中像素的强度成正比。然而，研究表明，这种方法不适用于受电极刺激的视网膜结构，即视网膜神经节细胞。iBIONICS公司目前正在开发一种新型视网膜假体，希望在其仿生眼中实现这种适应性刺激方法。该研究计划旨在使用适应性刺激方法模拟感知图像，并将其与传统刺激方法获得的图像进行比较。这项工作将为在iBIONICS植入物中实施这种适应性刺激方法铺平道路，并可能显著提高未来iBIONICS植入物的感知质量

A retinal prosthesis aims at giving back vision to blind people. To do so, an external camera captures visual**scenes and sends this information to an electrode array, which is positioned in the eye, in order to stimulate**directly the retina. The electric pulses from the electrodes are sent to the brain along the optic nerve and**interpreted as sight. Many types of patterns can be used to stimulate the different electrodes comprising the**array. Typically, the stimulation is proportional to the intensity of the pixels in the image captured by the**camera. However, it has been shown that this approach is not well adapted to the structures of the retina that**are stimulated by the electrodes, namely the retinal ganglion cells. iBIONICS, a company that is currently**developing a novel retinal prosthesis, wishes to implement such an adapted stimulation approach in its bionic**eye. The research proposal aims at simulating a perceived image using an adapted stimulation approach and**comparing it with an image obtained with the traditional stimulation approach. This work will pave the way to**the implementation of this adapted stimulation approach in iBIONICS' implants and could significantly**improve the perceptual quality of future iBIONICS' implantees.**