Research

Our research activity is decomposed into five tasks :

Research : Observing

Dynamics of non-standard retinal-sensor behavior for natural images processing. Objective: Collect existing and new experimental facts on non-standard behaviors of retinal ganglions cells in order to understand the computational capabilities of the retina under natural dynamic simulations. Methods: Multielectrodes arrays (MEA) system (64 X PLEXON amplifier, National Instrument (NI625X) acquisition board (10-25 KHz) and hard drives for the …

Research : Modelling

Identifying non-linear mapping from natural images to non-standard sensor behavior. Objective: Design and develop new functional models of non-linear local visual operators based on sparse representations and independent component analysis methods in order to encounter for sophisticated dynamical and statistical pre-processing modules of natural image sequences. This includes conductance-based modeling of motion direction selectivity observed in some …

Research : Analysing

Statistical analysis of retinal neural coding response: A framework from statistical physics. Objective: Analyze, at the local network level, the statistical properties of ganglions cells retinal output spike trains thus including adaptation mechanisms. Methods: Recent advances in multi-electrodes recording have thus brought us closer to understanding how populations of retinal ganglion cells encode visual information. By monitoring the …

Research : Simulating

Computer and numerical design of a non-standard bio-inspired early-vision front-end. Objectives: Effective simulation of standard and non-standard retinal ganglion cells behavior to natural visual stimulation. Methods: In order to analyze the non-standard retina cells’ behavior in a biological plausible context, we propose to use retinal simulation software: VirtualRetina. This simulator transforms an input video stream into spike trains …

Research : Application

Integration of these new dynamic sensory modules in a visual architecture and experimental study of their performances in the case of degraded visual sources. Objective: Validate the non-standard bio-inspired early-vision front-end on realistic data set, targeting low vision (e.g. underwater) applications. Methods: Since a new innovative early-vision front-end is going to be made available thanks to the …