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Updated: Apr 21, 2026

Computational Modeling of Retinal Neurons for Visual Prosthesis Research - Fundamental Approaches
Published on: June 21, 2022
Retina-V1 model of detectability across the visual field
Chris Bradley1, Jared Abrams1, Wilson S Geisler1
1University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
Abstract:
A practical model is proposed for predicting the detectability of targets at arbitrary locations in the visual field, in arbitrary gray scale backgrounds, and under photopic viewing conditions. The major factors incorporated into the model include (a) the optical point spread function of the eye, (b) local luminance gain control (Weber's law), (c) the sampling array of retinal ganglion cells, (d) orientation and spatial frequency-dependent contrast masking, (e) broadband contrast masking, and (f) efficient response pooling. The model is tested against previously reported threshold measurements on uniform backgrounds (the ModelFest data set and data from Foley, Varadharajan, Koh, & Farias, 2007) and against new measurements reported here for several ModelFest targets presented on uniform, 1/f noise, and natural backgrounds at retinal eccentricities ranging from 0° to 10°. Although the model has few free parameters, it is able to account quite well for all the threshold measurements.
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