Bionic Vision Lab
LightNews LightNews
banner
bionicvisionlab.org
Bionic Vision Lab
@bionicvisionlab.org
470 followers 170 following 130 posts
👁️🧠🖥️🧪🤖 What would the world look like with a bionic eye? Interdisciplinary research group at UC Santa Barbara. PI: @mbeyeler.bsky.social‬
#BionicVision #Blindness #NeuroTech #VisionScience #CompNeuro #NeuroAI
Posts Replies Media Videos
bionicvisionlab.org
Our final poster at #SfN2025 explores human-in-the-loop optimization for intracortical microstimulation, presented by @lozaneuro.bsky.social, in collaboration with @umh.es:

PSTR450.20
Nov 19 at 1:00 PM
www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/21171...

#SfN25 #VisionScience #NeuroTechnology
Schematic labeled human-in-the-loop optimization (HILO). It shows two stimuli on the left: pulse trains with varying stimulus amplitude over time. A participant has to choose which stimulus appears brighter. This feedback is used to inform a Gaussian process model that chooses the next stimulus pair, with the goal of finding the stimulus with the lowest overall charge to elicit perception
November 16, 2025 at 6:58 PM
bionicvisionlab.org
Lily Turkstra is presenting new findings on stimulus-selective spiking activity recorded during a working memory experiment in a unique intracortical dataset.

PSTR341.13
Nov 18 at 1:00 PM
www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/21171...

#SfN25 #VisionScience #Neuroscience
left: experimental setup showing an implantee with an introcortical prosthesis and example phosphenes described as a large filled circle, a half-moon, and a tiny dot. right: schematic showing cross-temporal decoding of delay period activity. Over 406 trials, working memory content could be decoded during the delay period in 88.5% of delay period windows.
November 16, 2025 at 6:58 PM
bionicvisionlab.org
Our second poster at #SfN2025 dives into biologically plausible networks for efficient image encoding, presented by Hasith Basnayake:

PSTR154.08
Nov 17 at 8:00 AM
www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/21171...

#SfN25 #VisionScience #NeuroTechnology
Table showing different network diagrams under test, trained either on MNIST or Fashion-MNIST, with either soft or hard winner-take-all (WTA) wiring. Synaptic weights showed either holistic or parts-based representations of images
November 16, 2025 at 6:58 PM
bionicvisionlab.org
If you are into #VisionScience or #neuroengineering, come check out our first poster at #SfN2025 this afternoon!

Emily Joyce is presenting new work on modeling the bipolar circuitry in the human fovea

PSTR122.22
Nov 16 at 1:00 PM
www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/21171...
Simulated responses of a bipolar cell mosaic to simulated electrical stimulation and the corresponding decoded phosphenes. Small phosphenes appear focal and colored, whereas larger phosphenes most often appear with a white-ish, yellow-ish tint.
November 16, 2025 at 6:58 PM
bionicvisionlab.org
✅ Checkerboard consistently outperformed the other patterns—higher accuracy, lower difficulty, fewer motion artifacts.

💡 Why? More spatial separation between activations = less perceptual interference.

It even matched performance of the ideal “no raster” condition, without breaking safety rules.
Boxplots showing task accuracy for two experimental tasks—Letter Recognition and Motion Discrimination—grouped by five raster patterns: No Raster (blue), Checkerboard (orange), Vertical (green), Horizontal (brown), and Random (pink). Each colored boxplot shows the median, interquartile range, and individual participant data points. In both tasks, Checkerboard and No Raster yield the highest median accuracy. Horizontal and Random patterns perform the worst, with more variability and lower scores. Significant pairwise differences (p < .05) are indicated by horizontal bars above the plots, showing that Checkerboard significantly outperforms Random and Horizontal in both tasks. A dashed line at 0.125 marks chance-level performance (1 out of 8). These results suggest Checkerboard rastering improves perceptual performance compared to conventional or unstructured patterns.
July 9, 2025 at 4:55 PM
bionicvisionlab.org
We ran a simulated prosthetic vision study in immersive VR using gaze-contingent, psychophysically grounded models of epiretinal implants.

🧪 Powered by BionicVisionXR.
📐 Modeled 100-electrode Argus-like array.
👀 Realistic phosphene appearance, eye/head tracking.
Diagram showing the four-step pipeline for simulating prosthetic vision in VR. Step 1: A virtual camera captures the user’s view, guided by eye gaze. The image is converted to grayscale and blurred for preprocessing. Step 2: The preprocessed image is mapped onto a simulated retinal implant with 100 electrodes. Electrodes are activated based on local image intensity and grouped into raster groups. Raster Group 1 is highlighted. Step 3: Simulated perception is shown with and without rastering. Without rastering (top), all electrodes are active, producing a more complete but unrealistic percept. With rastering (bottom), only 20 electrodes are active per frame, resulting in a temporally fragmented percept. Phosphene shape depends on parameters for spatial spread (ρ) and elongation (λ). Step 4: The rendered percept is updated with temporal effects and presented through a virtual reality headset.
July 9, 2025 at 4:55 PM
bionicvisionlab.org
Checkerboard rastering has been used in #BCI and #NeuroTech applications, often based on intuition.

But is it actually better, or just tradition?

No one had rigorously tested how these patterns impact perception in visual prostheses.

So we did.
Raster pattern configurations used in the study, shown as 10×10 electrode grids labeled with numbers 1 through 5, representing five sequentially activated timing groups. 1. Horizontal: Each row of electrodes belongs to one group, with activation proceeding top to bottom. 2. Vertical: Each column is a group, activated left to right. 3. Checkerboard: Electrode groups are arranged to maximize spatial separation, forming a checkerboard-like layout. 4. Random: Group assignments are randomly distributed across the grid, with no spatial structure. This pattern was re-randomized every five frames to test unstructured activation. Each group is represented with different shades of gray and labeled numerically to indicate activation order.
July 9, 2025 at 4:55 PM
bionicvisionlab.org
👁️🧠 New paper alert!

We show that checkerboard-style electrode activation improves perceptual clarity in simulated prosthetic vision—outperforming other patterns in both letter and motion tasks.

Less bias, more function, same safety.

🔗 doi.org/10.1088/1741...

#BionicVision #NeuroTech
Raster patterns in simulated prosthetic vision. On the left, a natural scene of a yellow car is shown, followed by its transformation into a prosthetic vision simulation using a 10×10 grid of electrodes (red dots). Below this, a zoomed-in example shows the resulting phosphene pattern. To comply with safety constraints, electrodes are divided into five spatial groups activated sequentially across ~220 milliseconds. Each row represents a different raster pattern: vertical (columns activated left to right), horizontal (rows top to bottom), checkerboard (spatially maximized separation), and random (reshuffled every five frames). For each pattern, five panels show how the scene is progressively built across the five raster groups. Vertical and horizontal patterns show strong directional streaking. Checkerboard shows more uniform activation and perceptual clarity. Random appears spatially noisy and inconsistent.
July 9, 2025 at 4:55 PM
bionicvisionlab.org
Yuchen Hou presenting at EMBC '24 in Orlando, FL (@IEEEembs @IEEEorg): We introduce two models that can predict phosphene fading & persistence under varying stimulus conditions, cross-validated on behavioral data reported by 9 Argus II users.

Preprint:...
November 9, 2024 at 5:25 PM
bionicvisionlab.org
Our students Tori LeVier and Lily Turkstra had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Dr. Philip Hessburg (@DIO_EyeOnDesign), co-founder and Director Emeritus of the Detroit Institute of Ophthalmology at...
November 9, 2024 at 5:25 PM
bionicvisionlab.org
Find out what first got Dr. Rathbun into bionic vision and how his work with Dr. Eberhart Zrenner at the University of Tübingen (@uni_tue) inspired him to start the Bionics and Vision Lab at @HenryFordHealth!
November 9, 2024 at 5:36 PM
bionicvisionlab.org
Our students Lily Turkstra and Tori LeVier recently sat down with Dr. @DanielRathbun from @HenryFordHealth to talk about recent advancements, challenges, and future prospects of #BionicEye technologies.

Full...
November 9, 2024 at 5:25 PM
bionicvisionlab.org
Come by Poster M094 tonight at #MICCAI2022 to chat about retinal implants!
Our work was also highlighted by the MICCAI Daily magazine:
https://www.rsipvision.com/MICCAI2022-Monday/16/
November 9, 2024 at 5:25 PM
bionicvisionlab.org
Congratulations🎉to our graduating @UCSBpsych senior Yuchen Hou for winning 2(!) PBS awards:
- PBS Exceptional Academic Performance Award
- Abdullah & Marjorie R. Nasser Memorial Scholarship Fund Award
which recognize her academic excellence and research aptitude. Well deserved!
November 9, 2024 at 5:25 PM
bionicvisionlab.org
Into #visionscience & looking to get some paid research experience during your pre-#PhD gap year?

Come work with us & study visual perception in retinal implant users: https://recruit.ap.ucsb.edu/JPF02194

#AcademicJobs @psychologyjobs @PsychChatter @VisionScience
November 9, 2024 at 5:25 PM
bionicvisionlab.org
As a proof of concept, we show how percept shape *might be* improved for the implant settings of three existing Argus II users.

Results are expected to be highly patient-specific, mainly depending on:
- intraocular implant location
- behaviorally reported phosphene distortions
November 9, 2024 at 5:36 PM
bionicvisionlab.org
Similar to van Steveninck et al. (2021), we trained a deep net to predict the optimal stimulus to produce a desired percept.

2 important changes:
- ✅psychophysically validated phosphene model
- ❌no *de*coder (which could unlearn any deficiencies of the *en*coder)
November 9, 2024 at 5:31 PM
bionicvisionlab.org
We found that:
- using an #HMD may⬆️performance
- increased phosphene elongation may⬇️performance
- more electrodes do not necessarily⬆️performance

Our results highlight the importance of using an
appropriate phosphene model when predicting visual outcomes for bionic vision.
November 9, 2024 at 5:36 PM
bionicvisionlab.org
New work by Justin Kasowski lets you "see through the eyes" of a #BionicEye user: Immersive virtual reality simulations of bionic vision (Augmented Humans '22 @aug_humans)

Preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.05675
Code:...
November 9, 2024 at 5:25 PM
bionicvisionlab.org
She has also reported on the importance of field of view (FoV) in visual prosthesis design (https://doi.org/10.1088/1741-2552/abb9be) and prototyped an #AugmentedReality system for navigation (https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.14957).
We can't wait to tell you what's next!
November 9, 2024 at 5:42 PM
bionicvisionlab.org
You may have heard about her work on combining structural and semantic segmentation to improve indoor scene understanding with simulated prosthetic vision:
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227677
November 9, 2024 at 5:36 PM
bionicvisionlab.org
We are excited to welcome the lab's first #postdoc: Melani Sanchez Garcia, who graduated with a PhD in Computer Science and Systems Engineering (cum laude) @unizar.

She'll be working on new ways to apply #ComputerVision/#MachineLearning to the...
November 9, 2024 at 5:25 PM
bionicvisionlab.org
Congrats to Tanya Bhatia, Honors Student in @UCSBpsych, for winning a @sacnas Student Presentation Award at...
November 9, 2024 at 5:25 PM
bionicvisionlab.org
Last but not least is John Exton (@UniofNewcastle) who is working towards an optogenetic cortical visual prosthesis.

And with this, the technical session at #TEATC2021 comes to a close. What a whirlwind it's been! See you in 2 years (hopefully in person)
November 9, 2024 at 7:03 PM
bionicvisionlab.org
Seung Woo Lee (@MGHMedicine) continues Dr. Fried's presentation by detailing how micro-magnetic stimulation of V1 can lead to focal activation of downstream neurons in the human visual system.
#TEATC2021
November 9, 2024 at 6:58 PM