A neuroengineering suite of computational tools for visual prostheses

The cooperation between neuroscience and biomedical engineering gave rise to a recent, but growing research field, known as neuroengineering. We follow its principles to have a system providing basic descriptions of the visual world to the brain’s cortex. We describe a set of software and hardware tools to interface with neural tissue, in order to transmit visual information encoded into a bioinspired neural-like form. The set is composed of a retina-like encoder, and a platform to optimize electrical stimulation parameters for a multi-electrode implant. The main objective is to progress towards a functional visual neuroprosthesis for the blind. r 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.