Program

Provisional program below. Full schedule soon!

THURS OCT 3

Evening welcome reception (STEM Centre, University of York)

FRI OCT 4

Invited Session: Focusing on the Human Fovea

The machinery of human vision is spatially inhomogeneous, with a neuronal sampling gradient that peaks near the line of sight and declines sharply with eccentricity. Despite the foveated nature of the visual system, our field of vision appears comparatively uniform in quality. This session will feature recent work that characterizes the structure of foveal pathways using high-resolution ophthalmoscopy and neuroimaging, and will highlight complementary behavioral studies that show how oculomotor control, attentional processing, and the integration of information across the central retina influence our subjective experience.

• Heidi Baseler, University of York: Plasticity and stability in human foveal pathways

• Wolf Harmening, University of Bonn, Department of Ophthalmology, AOVISION Laboratory: Foveal sampling in space and time

• Martina Poletti, University of Rochester: Active vision at the foveolar scale: Insights from fixational oculomotor behavior and retinal anatomy

• Alexander C. Schütz, University of Marburg: Perception in the foveal rod scotoma

Invited Session: Visual Prosthetics

Amid challenges in commercializing retinal implant technology, scientific efforts are underway to learn from previous obstacles and spearhead the next wave of prosthetic vision innovations. This session will cover the current state and future directions in visual prosthetics, focusing on the creation of implants with large counts of flexible electrodes, and how their design and functionality may be informed by advancements in our understanding of device-neural tissue interactions and artificial intelligence. Insights from current clinical trials will provide a well-rounded view of the progress toward more effective visual prosthetic solutions.

• Dan Adams, Neuralink: The Neuralink implant as a visual prosthesis

• Xing Chen, University of Pittsburgh: Artificial vision via high-channel-count visual cortical stimulation in primates

• Eduardo Fernández, Universidad Miguel Hernández de Elche, Spain: Bidirectional communication with the human visual brain: Towards an advanced cortical visual neuroprosthesis for the blind

• Yağmur Güçlütürk, Radboud University:  A user-centred design approach for improving object recognition in simulated phosphene vision

SAT OCT 5

Invited Session: Machine Learning and AI Approaches to Retinal Diagnostics

The human retina is a vascularized neural structure that is uniquely accessible to optical imaging. This means that large amounts of imaging data are available from clinical retinal scans and it is possible to use these data to teach machine learning models to diagnose disease. Our speakers will present the current state-of-the-art analysis of retinal imagining using AI/machine learning and discuss the broader ethical ramifications of this technology and potential future applications.

• Adam Dubis, University of Utah, Moran Eye Center: Towards more robust AI models in ophthalmology

• Anya Hurlbert, Newcastle University

• Marinko Sarunic, University College London

• Jithin Yohannan, Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins University: Optimizing clinician-AI teaming to enhance glaucoma care

Boynton Lecture: Michael Webster, University of Nevada, Reno

SUN OCT 6

Invited Session: The visual ecology of colour and light

The human visual system has been moulded by the spatial and spectral properties of its environment. This session illustrates four examples of this interaction - showing how human visual processing is affected by changes in mean illumination and colour across the day, statistical regularities in spatiochromatic signals and our own activity within those environments.

• Annette Allen, University of Manchester

• Jenny M. Bosten, University of Sussex: Influences of the colour statistics of natural scenes on colour perception

• Karl R. Gegenfurtner, Giessen University: Color constancy in real and virtual worlds

• Julie Harris, University of St Andrews

Workshop: Image System Engineering Toolbox for Biology (ISETBIO) 

This year's meeting will feature a tutorial on ISETBIO a Matlab toolbox designed for calculating the properties of the front end of biological visual systems. Workshop is free and open to all, but you'll be asked to register for attendance.