Modeling the G-protein signaling of the retina with fractional calculus

The first part of a cone´s signal transduction is investigated from an image processing perspective in order to find out what differentiates (human) vision from computer vision. We found that the activity of cone opsins— visual pigments that are activated by the impact of a photon—can be described as an approximation of a fractional integrator of order 0.1–0.2 on frequencies between 1–30 Hz. We explore how this affects the output signal and provide examples of how this can be used for noise reduction and image processing. We also present a simplified model since these processes require excessive computational power for computer vision modeling.