BionicVisionXR: An Open-Source Virtual Reality Toolbox for Bionic Vision

A major outstanding challenge in the field of bionic vision is predicting what people “see” when they use their devices. The limited field of view of current devices necessitates head movements to scan the scene, which is difficult to simulate on a computer screen. In addition, many computational models of bionic vision lack biological realism.

To address these challenges, we present BionicVisionXR, an open-source virtual reality toolbox for simulated prosthetic vision that uses a psychophysically validated computational model to allow sighted participants to “see through the eyes” of a bionic eye user.

Code

Project Team

Project Lead:

Avatar

Apurv Varshney

PhD Student

Principal Investigator:

Avatar

Michael Beyeler

Assistant Professor

Publications

We used a neurobiologically inspired model of simulated prosthetic vision in an immersive virtual reality environment to test the relative importance of semantic edges and relative depth cues to support the ability to avoid obstacles and identify objects.

We present VR-SPV, an open-source virtual reality toolbox for simulated prosthetic vision that uses a psychophysically validated computational model to allow sighted participants to ‘see through the eyes’ of a bionic eye user.

We propose to embed biologically realistic models of simulated prosthetic vision in immersive virtual reality so that sighted subjects can act as ‘virtual patients’ in real-world tasks.

Back to all software projects