The seminar is sponsored by NYU-ECNU Institute of Brain and Cognitive Science at NYU Shanghai.
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Abstract:
There are numerous advances in prosthetic vision for the blind, including retinal and cortical implants, and other sensory substitution devices. However, they all have low resolution and limited dynamic range that severely restricting their utility. To overcome these limitations for practical use of visual prostheses, image processing or the imaging system could emphasize objects of interest and suppress the background clutter. We proposed an active confocal imaging system based on light-field technology that will enable a blind user of any visual prosthesis to efficiently scan, focus on, and ‘‘see’’ only an object of interest while suppressing interference from background clutter. The system captures three-dimensional scene information using a light-field camera. After generating a confocal image from light-field information, a de-cluttering process (edge filtering) removes the clutter based on blur differential. In experiments we verified the significant impact of confocal-based background clutter removal on recognition of objects in low resolution and limited dynamic range simulated phosphene images. The result shows that background de-cluttering improved the objects’ recognition rate by a factor of 5.6. We further describe a number of active modes of operation and are pursuing expansion of the imaging to a bipolar multilevel edge presentation that could support prosthetic that provide more than 2 grey levels.
Biography:
Dr. Peli is the Moakley Scholar in Aging Eye Research at Schepens Eye Research Institute, Massachusetts Eye and Ear, and Professor of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School. He also serves on the faculties of the New England College of Optometry (Adjunct Professor of Optometry and Visual Sciences), Tufts University School of Medicine (Adjunct Professor of Ophthalmology), and Dalian Maritime University, China (Visiting Professor). Since 1983 he has been caring for visually impaired patients as the director of the Vision Rehabilitation Service at the New England Medical Center Hospitals (now Tufts-Medical Center) in Boston. Dr. Peli is a Fellow of the American Academy of Optometry, a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, a Fellow of the SID (Society for Information Display), and a Fellow of the SPIE (The International Society of Optical Engineering).