From Light to Spikes: a Large-Scale Retina Simulator

The purpose of this article is to provide potential neuroscientists and computer scientists with an artificial retina model, delivering spikes to higher-level visual tasks simulations. The architecture of our retina model is based on recent physiological studies, so that each feature is related to real retina characteristics. The model includes a linear filtering process, followed by a static non-linearity, and then a spike generation process. Two series of tests were performed: firstly on single cells for which ground truth is available, secondly on realistic visual scenes. This retina model can be further extended and we describe some possible additional features. It is our conviction that building such a bio-inspired model will help in better understanding how the retina performs and also in relating observations to biological mechanisms.