Abstract:
Following a short overview of the newly established Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Melbourne, and some of the challenges associated with its establishment, this seminar will present research involving the development of retinal implant stimulation techniques. A number of challenges facing electrical stimulation of the retina necessitate more sophisticated methods of stimulation in order to achieve targeted and meaningful perception. Computational models of current flow and neural activation in complex retinal tissue provide a means for the exploration of novel multi-electrode stimulation strategies and the development of stimulus optimization techniques. This seminar deals with both biophysically-detailed and phenomenological approaches to the modelling of neural activation in the retina in response to simultaneous multi-electrode stimulation. Through the recovery of a simple statistical linear-nonlinear model of retinal activation from a complex biophysical model, a computationally inexpensive, yet highly accurate, model of retinal activation in response to multi-electrode activation is presented. Via the representation of this model as an equivalent artificial neural network, a method for the efficient and robust optimization of stimulus currents given desired neural activation patterns is presented.
Biosketch:
Professor Anthony (Tony) Burkitt holds the Chair in Bio-Signals and Bio-Systems in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Melbourne since 2007. His research encompasses a number of areas of neuroscience and medical bionics, including computational neuroscience, neuroengineering, retinal-implant vision processing, cochlear-implant speech processing and bio-signal processing for epilepsy. His research has made significant contributions to understanding the behaviour and function of the brain and it has also been instrumental in the development of visual stimulation paradigms for retinal implants, new cochlear implant speech processing strategies, methods for detecting and predicting seizures, and the use of electrical stimulation for seizure abatement in epilepsy. He was the Director of Bionic Vision Australia (2010-2016), a Special Research Initiative in Bionic Vision Science and Technology of the Australian Research Council (ARC), and he successfully led the project though all of its phases: Project conception, securing $50million in ARC funding, the research and development programs that led to the development of a prototype bionic eye (suprachoroidal retinal implant), the successful implantation in three patients, and the establishment of the company Bionic Vision Technologies (BVT) with US$18million of venture capital for the ongoing commercial and clinical development of the technology.