Simulated bipolar cells in fovea of human retina. I. Computer simulation

Abstract

This static bipolar cell (BC) model of the human fovea is based on a number of reasonable assumptions. The human fovea is directly responsible for visual acuity and color vision. The fovea can be considered as having two parts; a central fovea with only red- and green-sensitive cones and a parafovea with blue-sensitive cones added to the other two. A cone mosaic can be precisely organized spatially into unit hexagons that specify inputs to horizontal cells (HC) and BCs. The retina up to and including BCs is piece-wise linear, i.e. at a given steady-state adapting light intensity BC outputs are linear functions of the physical image. BC centers receive inputs directly from weighted cones, while antagonistic surrounds receive inverted inputs from HCs. Appropriate optical and chromatic filtering due to the eye that are taken from human data are incorporated into the model. Chromatic aberrations are simulated by three separate point spread functions that also are taken from human data. Automatic gain control of cones is a function of intensity and wavelength of the steady adapting light.