Feature accentuation in phosphenated images

We present and evaluate different approaches to feature accentuation in phosphenated images for different image resolutions. The goal of this study is to find methods to attract an implantee´s visual attention to important image content like faces, obstacles or road signs. We do this by defining an important region in the image and accentuating it by either increasing the brightness of outlining phosphenes or by using elliptical phosphenes to circumscribe the feature. While we only see limited benefit of ellipse phosphenes for a high-resolution prosthesis, the use of elliptical phosphenes of different orientations is a promising way to highlight features in a low-resolution phosphene representation of an image.