Vision function testing for a suprachoroidal retinal prosthesis: effects of image filtering.
One strategy to improve the effectiveness of prosthetic vision devices is to process incoming images to ensure that key information can be perceived by the user. This paper presents the first comprehensive results of vision function testing for a suprachoroidal retinal prosthetic device utilizing of 20 stimulating electrodes. Further, we investigate whether using image filtering can improve results on a light localization task for implanted participants compared to minimal vision processing. No controlled implanted participant studies have yet investigated whether vision processing methods that are not task-specific can lead to improved results.



Three participants with profound vision loss from retinitis pigmentosa were implanted with a suprachoroidal retinal prosthesis. All three completed multiple trials of a light localization test, and one participant completed multiple trials of acuity tests. The visual representations used were: Lanczos2 (a high quality Nyquist bandlimited downsampling filter); minimal vision processing (MVP); wide view regional averaging filtering (WV); scrambled; and, system off.



Using Lanczos2, all three participants successfully completed a light localization task and obtained a significantly higher percentage of correct responses than using MVP ([Formula: see text]) or with system off ([Formula: see text]). Further, in a preliminary result using Lanczos2, one participant successfully completed grating acuity and Landolt C tasks, and showed significantly better performance ([Formula: see text]) compared to WV, scrambled and system off on the grating acuity task.



Participants successfully completed vision tasks using a 20 electrode suprachoroidal retinal prosthesis. Vision processing with a Nyquist bandlimited image filter has shown an advantage for a light localization task. This result suggests that this and targeted, more advanced vision processing schemes may become important components of retinal prostheses to enhance performance. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01503576.
NICTA Computer Vision Research Group, Building A, 7 London Circuit, Canberra, Australia. Research School of Engineering, Australian National University, Australia.
Nick
N
Barnes
Adele F
AF
Scott
Paulette
P
Lieby
Matthew A
MA
Petoe
Chris
C
McCarthy
Ashley
A
Stacey
Lauren N
LN
Ayton
Nicholas C
NC
Sinclair
Mohit N
MN
Shivdasani
Nigel H
NH
Lovell
Hugh J
HJ
McDermott
Janine G
JG
Walker
D001766:Blindness / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation; D002829:Choroid / Q000502:physiology*; D004567:Electrodes, Implanted; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008027:Light; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D012174:Retinitis Pigmentosa / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014786:Vision Disorders / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation; D014785:Vision, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D014792:Visual Acuity; D014796:Visual Perception; D057488:Visual Prosthesis