Virtual Retina Large scale simulator of biological retina INRIA CeCILL C open-source license (2007) Partially supported by the EC IP project FP6-015879 FACETS Neuromathcomp research-team, INRIA Sophia Antipolis - Méditerranée

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Virtual Retina is a simulation software developped at INRIA Sophia Antipolis - Méditerannée by Adrien Wohrer during his PhD (2005-2008) supervised by Pierre Kornprobst and Thierry Viéville. Virtual Retina allows large-scale simulations of biologically-plausible retinas, with customizable parameters, and different possible biological features: Spatio-temporal linear filter implementing the basic Center/Surround organization of retinal filtering. Non-linear contrast gain control mechanism providing instantaneous adaptation to the local level of contrast. This stage is modelled through dynamical adaptation conductances in the membranes of bipolar cells; the resulting model reproduces contrast-dependent amplitude and phase non-linearities, as measured in real mammalian retinas by Shapley & Victor 78. Spike generation by one or several layers of ganglion cells paving the visual field. Magnocellular and Parvocellular pathways can be modelled in the same framework according to the parameters chosen. Large-scale simulations can be pursued on up to 100,000 spiking cells. Possibility of a global radial inhomogeneity modeling the foveated organization of mammalian retinas. In this case, the spatial scales of filtering, and the density of spiking cells, both depend on the eccentricity from the center of the retina. Possibility to include a basic microsaccades generator at the input of the retina, to account for fixational eye movements. Virtual Retina is under INRIA CeCill C open-source licence (IDDN number IDDN.FR.001.210034.000.S.P.2007.000.31235), so that you can download it, install it and run it on your own sequences. Virtual Retina also offers you a web service (v2.1), so that you may test directly the main software on your own data, without any installation. This webservice was developed in collaboration with Nicolas Debeissat. Virtual Retina is the result of a research contribution, and you will also find the associated research publications if you want to learn more.