Novel color via stimulation of individual photoreceptors at population scale

By Eric Craypo

"UC Berkeley scientists created a new platform called 'Oz' that directly controls up to 1,000 photoreceptors in the eye at once, providing new insight into the nature of human sight and vision loss."

A new paper, "Novel color via stimulation of individual photoreceptors at population scale" from the labs of Austin Roorda and William Tuten, Herbert Wertheim School of Optometry & Vision Science, University of California, Berkeley); Ren Ng, Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley; and the Department of Ophthalmology, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA has been published in the journal Science Advances.

The paper's authors are James Fong, Hannah K. Doyle, Congli Wang, Alexandra E. Boehm, Sofie R. Herbeck, Vimal Prabhu Pandiyan, Brian P. Schmidt, Pavan Tiruveedhula , John E. Vanston, William S. Tuten, Ramkumar Sabesan, Austin Roorda, and Ren Ng.

Abstract

"We introduce a principle, Oz, for displaying color imagery: directly controlling the human eye’s photoreceptor activity via cell-by-cell light delivery. Theoretically, novel colors are possible through bypassing the constraints set by the cone spectral sensitivities and activating M cone cells exclusively. In practice, we confirm a partial expansion of colorspace toward that theoretical ideal. Attempting to activate M cones exclusively is shown to elicit a color beyond the natural human gamut, formally measured with color matching by human subjects. They describe the color as blue-green of unprecedented saturation. Further experiments show that subjects perceive Oz colors in image and video form. The prototype targets laser microdoses to thousands of spectrally classified cones under fixational eye motion. These results are proof-of-principle for programmable control over individual photoreceptors at population scale."

Read the Paper

Novel color via stimulation of individual photoreceptors at population scale

Read the Berkeley News Article

Read the UC Berkeley article by Kara Manke.

Scientists trick the eye into seeing new color ‘olo’

Related Information

Ren Ng Lab


Austin Roorda Lab


Ramkumar Sabesan


William Tuten

About the Image

This image was created by the UC Berkeley News team, using the caption: "Using a new technique called 'Oz,' scientists at UC Berkeley can trick the eye into seeing images, videos and even a brand new color — a profoundly saturated peacock green that they named 'olo.'"

Graphic by Marissa Gutierrez/UC Berkeley (Source: Trevor McKinnon via Unsplash)