Optimising phosphene vision using a realistic phosphene vision simulator
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2022-08-25
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en
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Abstract
In a world where people largely navigate by sight, blindness presents a signi cant obstacle
in the lives of millions of people. Visual cortical implants are an emerging neuroprosthetics
technology, which aims to provide a rudimentary level of vision to blind people.
The technology does this by making use of 'phosphenes', small dots of light that are perceived
without light entering the eye. It makes use of the retinotopic organization of the
visual system to provide meaningful phosphene perception through localized electrical
stimulation of the visual cortex via micro-electrodes inserted into the brain tissue. As
implementing this neuroprosthetic technology in the visual cortex involves an invasive
surgical procedure, many experiments regarding phosphene vision are performed using
simulations of phosphene vision and sighted subjects. These experiments aim to solve
problems such as comparing image processing strategies to translate a real world image to
a phosphene perception. However, the simulation strategies used for these experiments
are often highly simpli ed, which limits the validity of the results of the experiments
when making statements about real phosphene vision. In this study, we rst analyse the
shortcomings of previously used phosphene simulation methods. Next, we have created
a more biologically realistic simulator, implementing knowledge of phosphene perception
and interactions that arise from various simulation parameters. Using this simulator,
it will be possible to test new algorithms for phosphene representation in a way that is
closer to the expected percept generated by real visual cortical neuroprosthetics. When
compared to a simpli ed method of phosphene simulation, this study nds that in high
phosphene resolution conditions (32x32), the more realistic method of phosphene simulation
allows for a higher performance in an object detection task. In a low resolution (8x8),
the simpli ed and complex conditions perform similarly. This con rms the method of
phosphene simulation could a ect the conclusion of an experiment investigating di erent
phosphene resolutions for phosphene vision. Therefore, carefully choosing a method of
phosphene simulation is an important step when investigating phosphene vision using
simulation.
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Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen