Researchers are developing a dynamic imaging chip inspired by the retina that will be capable of capturing high-performance video at low bandwidth and power consumption. The ‘ silicon retina ` is being developed by the European ‘ See-better` consortium and will have immediate applications for the electronics industry and for machine vision – with artificial prosthesis for blind people representing a long term goal.

Charge-couple devices (CCDs) and complementary metal-oxide-semiconductors (CMOSs) are the most commonly used imaging sensors and have found their way into devices such as mobile phones and laptops. ‘If you’re taking photos that’s fine, because you need every single pixel, ` said project partner Dr Konstantin Nikolic of imperial college London. ‘But if you’re making a continuous film there is a massive redundancy of information. If you’re filming at 40fps, each frame consists of millions of pixels, yet there is very little difference from frame to frame. `

Nikolic explained that the retina acts as a filter by only sending on salient spatial and temporal information to the brain via the optic nerve. ‘It’s like a micro-processer that compresses data- it’s very efficient at reducing the bandwidth to transmit the information.  Say we have an input of about 100 million pixels on the retina, the output is only about a million pixels.` By understanding how the retina achieves this, the group will be able to make imaging chips that have a high performance with low power consumption. They will also be useful for simple tasks such as autonomous video tracking, which can be used for traffic surveillance.

BY ANDREW CZYZEWSKI

Sourced from "the Engineer" magazine