Real time simulation of the retina allowing visualization of each processing stage

Conference · Thu Mar 01 00:00:00 EST 1990

OSTI ID:5681139

Teeters, J L ^[1]; Werblin, F ^[2]

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1. Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA (United States)
2. California Univ., Berkeley, CA (United States)

Our retina computes to let us see, but can we see our retina compute Until now, the answer has been no' because the unconscious nature of the processing hides it from our view. Here we overcome the barrier of our closeness and describe what (to our knowledge) is the first method of seeing computations performed throughout the retina. This is achieved by using neurophysical data to construct a model of the retina, and using a special purpose image processing computer (PIPE) to implement the model in real time. Processing in the model is organized into stages corresponding to computations performed by each retinal cell type. The final stage is the formation of the transient (change detecting) ganglion cell response. A CCD camera forms the input image and the activity of any retinal cell type layer is the output which is displayed on a TV monitor. By changing the retina cell type driving the monitor, the progressive transformations of the image occurring in each stage of retina processing can be observed. The simulations demonstrate several phenomena including the slight blurring of the image caused by coupling between receptors, the relatively slow response to change and further blurring of the image by horizontal cells, the enhancement of moving edges by the bipolar cells, the separation of information flow into On and Off components, change detection in amacrine cells and the lateral inhibition to ganglion cells. Because the retina is the first stage of all biological vision systems, this processing may be useful for machine vision.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE; USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-48; AC03-76SF00098
• OSTI ID: 5681139
• Report Number(s): UCRL-JC-106895; CONF-910450-17; ON: DE92008926
• Resource Relation: Conference: SPIE international symposium on optical engineering and photonics in aerospace sensing, Orlando, FL (United States), 1-5 Apr 1991
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS//MATHEMATICS, COMPUTING, AND INFORMATION SCIENCE
RETINA
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
ALGORITHMS
GANGLIONS
IMAGE PROCESSING
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
VISION
BODY
BODY AREAS
EYES
FACE
HEAD
MATHEMATICAL LOGIC
NERVOUS SYSTEM
ORGANS
PROCESSING
SENSE ORGANS
SIMULATION
551000* - Physiological Systems
990200 - Mathematics & Computers