A computational model to design wide field-of-view optic nerve neuroprostheses
Simone Romeni,
Daniela De Luca,
Luca Pierantoni,
Laura Toni,
Gabriele Marino,
Sara Moccia,
Silvestro Micera
Affiliations
Simone Romeni
Modular Implantable Neurotechnologies Laboratory, Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele & Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Milan, Italy; Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Translational Neural Engineering, Center for Neuroprosthetics and Institute of Bioengineering, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland; Corresponding author
Daniela De Luca
The Biorobotics Institute and Department of Excellence in Robotics and AI, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy
Luca Pierantoni
The Biorobotics Institute and Department of Excellence in Robotics and AI, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy; Brain Connectivity Laboratory, Department of Neuroscience and Neurorehabilitation, IRCCS San Raffaele Roma, Rome, Italy
Laura Toni
Modular Implantable Neurotechnologies Laboratory, Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele & Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Milan, Italy; The Biorobotics Institute and Department of Excellence in Robotics and AI, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy
Gabriele Marino
Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Translational Neural Engineering, Center for Neuroprosthetics and Institute of Bioengineering, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland; The Biorobotics Institute and Department of Excellence in Robotics and AI, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy
Sara Moccia
The Biorobotics Institute and Department of Excellence in Robotics and AI, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy; Department of Innovative Technologies in Medicine and Dentistry, Università degli Studi “G. d’Annunzio”, Chieti-Pescara, Italy
Silvestro Micera
Modular Implantable Neurotechnologies Laboratory, Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele & Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Milan, Italy; Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Translational Neural Engineering, Center for Neuroprosthetics and Institute of Bioengineering, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland; The Biorobotics Institute and Department of Excellence in Robotics and AI, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy
Summary: Retinal stimulation (RS) allows restoring vision in blind patients, but it covers only a narrow region of the visual field. Optic nerve stimulation (ONS) has the potential to produce visual perceptions spanning the whole visual field, but it produces very irregular phosphenes. We introduced a geometrical model converting retinal and optic nerve firing rates into visual perceptions and vice versa and a method to estimate the best perceptions elicitable through an electrode configuration. We then compared in silico ONS and RS through simulated prosthetic vision of static and dynamic visual scenes. Both simulations and SPV experiments showed that it might be possible to reconstruct natural visual scenes with ONS and RS, and that ONS wide field-of-view allows the perception of more detail in dynamic scenarios than RS. Our findings suggest that ONS could represent an interesting approach for vision restoration and that our model can be used to optimize it.
