Section: Software

Virtual Retina

Participants : Adrien Wohrer, Pierre Kornprobst [ correspondent ] .

We developed a retina simulation software which transforms a video into spike trains  [27] (see also Adrien Wohrer PhD [51] ). This project was developped in the scope of the EC project FACETS. Our goal was twofold: Allow large scale simulations (up to 100,000 neurons) in reasonable processing times and keep a strong biological plausibility (see  [52] for a review), taking into account implementation constraints. The underlying model includes a linear model of filtering in the Outer Plexiform Layer, a well-posed shunting feedback at the level of bipolar cells accounting for rapid contrast gain control  [50] , and a spike generation process modeling ganglion cells. We proved the pertinence of our software by reproducing several experimental measurements from single ganglion cells such as cat X and Y cells. This software is an evolutionary tool for neuroscientists that need realistic large-scale input spike trains in subsequent treatments, and for educational purposes. We also developed a web service, so that one may test directly the main software on his own data, without any installation. Virtual Retina was distributed in 2007 with an open-source licence (CeCILL C). Up to our knowledge, this is the only free retina simulator that allows to reproduce a spiking output from a video stream, which has been confronted to fine biological data.

Website: http://www-sop.inria.fr/odyssee/software/virtualretina/

Virtual Retina is under CeCILL C licence:

APP logiciel Virtual Retina: IDDN.FR.OO1.210034.000.S.P.2007.000.31235