DSP based image processing for retinal prosthesis

The real-time image processing in retinal prosthesis consists of the implementation of various image processing algorithms like edge detection, edge enhancement, decimation etc. The algorithmic computations in real-time may have high level of computational complexity and hence the use of digital signal processors (DSPs) for the implementation of such algorithms is proposed here. This application desires that the DSPs be highly computationally efficient while working on low power. DSPs have computational capabilities of hundreds of millions of instructions per second (MIPS) or millions of floating point operations per second (MFLOPS) along with certain processor configurations having low power. The various image processing algorithms, the DSP requirements and capabilities of different platforms would be discussed in this paper.