Department of Electro-Optical Engineering, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel.
Schepens Eye Research Institute of Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Department of Ophthalmology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States of America.
J Neural Eng. 2021 Aug 24;18(4). doi: 10.1088/1741-2552/ac1b6c.
. The perception of individuals fitted with retinal prostheses is not fully understood, although several retinal implants have been tested and commercialized. Realistic simulations of perception with retinal implants would be useful for future development and evaluation of such systems.We implemented a retinal prosthetic vision simulation, including temporal features, which have not been previously simulated. In particular, the simulation included temporal aspects such as persistence and perceptual fading of phosphenes and the electrode activation rate.The simulated phosphene persistence showed an effective reduction in flickering at low electrode activation rates. Although persistence has a positive effect on static scenes, it smears dynamic scenes. Perceptual fading following continuous stimulation affects prosthetic vision of both static and dynamic scenes by making them disappear completely or partially. However, we showed that perceptual fading of a static stimulus might be countered by head-scanning motions, which together with the persistence revealed the contours of the faded object. We also showed that changing the image polarity may improve simulated prosthetic vision in the presence of persistence and perceptual fading.Temporal aspects have important roles in prosthetic vision, as illustrated by the simulations. Considering these aspects may improve the future design, the training with, and evaluation of retinal prostheses.
个体对视网膜假体的感知尚不完全清楚，尽管已经测试和商业化了几种视网膜植入物。视网膜植入物感知的逼真模拟对于此类系统的未来开发和评估将非常有用。我们实现了一种包括以前未模拟过的时间特征的视网膜假体视觉模拟。特别是，该模拟包括了闪光和电极激活率等时间方面的现象，如光幻视的持久性和感知消退。在低电极激活率下，模拟的光幻视持久性显示出闪烁的有效减少。虽然持久性对静态场景有积极的影响，但它会使动态场景模糊。连续刺激后的感知消退会使静态和动态场景的假体视觉完全或部分消失。然而，我们表明，通过头部扫描运动可以抵消静态刺激的感知消退，这种运动与持久性一起揭示了消退物体的轮廓。我们还表明，在存在持久性和感知消退的情况下，改变图像极性可能会改善模拟的假体视觉。时间方面在假体视觉中起着重要作用，如模拟所示。考虑到这些方面可以提高视网膜假体的未来设计、训练和评估。
