Proposed Intracortical Vision Prosthesis System for Phosphene Mapping and Psychophysical Studies

Progress in the research and development of the proposed intracortical vision prosthesis towards human implantation brings an increased need to evaluate the ability of an implanted volunteer to utilize prosthetic vision for daily tasks. Simulations of prosthetic vision, in sighted individuals, can help assess the usability of artificial vision for the visual tasks in unsighted users. The proposed intracortical vision prosthesis will acquire an image, and process the image in real-time to generate stimulation patterns to be eventually delivered to the implanted microelectrodes. In order to evaluate the simulated prosthetic vision by psychophysical and phosphene mapping studies, a new platform is proposed for image processing in the intracortical vision prosthesis system. The image processor system will be designed to be portable, light-weight, and have low power consumption, to allow continuous wearablility by the user. The throughput performance of the processor is identified as an important criterion in the selection of an optimal image processor. In this paper we demonstrate the preliminary image processing tests performed on an ARM-based processor as a first step towards the development of a continuously wearable image processor of the intracortical vision prosthesis system.