Static image simulation of electronic visual prostheses

The development of electronic visual prostheses (artificial human vision/bionic eye systems) is steadily progressing due to the combined efforts of several international research teams. In order to anticipate informative image processing strategies that could be used in these prostheses systems, we have undertaken psychophysical testing using low quality images to simulate visual representation associated with electronic visual prostheses. Our objective is to investigate how much information and what types of information are needed to recognise or perceive a scene, when most of the original scene data is lost. This paper describes results from testing of 174 normally sighted subjects who viewed a set of low quality (low spatial resolution and low grey-scale) static images. These experiments have identified informative image processing operations which can improve understanding of picture content.