A method for retinal inspired foveated image reconstruction

• A novel two-stage foveated image reconstruction method is proposed to simulate a • biologically plausible foveated retina. • Design a monocular humanoid field-of-view (FOV) model to capture humanoid-eyes with a human-like FOV using a commonly available uniform-pixel camera. • Present a non-uniform pixel sampling approach to approximate the spatial distribution of cones across the retina. The foveal mechanism of the human retina produces sharp central vision with a blurred periphery. By generating foveated images that more closely replicate this mechanism, it is possible to significantly enhance immersion and deliver a more natural visual experience in virtual environments and related applications. In this paper, we proposed a two-stage foveated image reconstruction method to simulate a biologically plausible foveated retina. In the first stage, a monocular humanoid field of view (FOV) model is designed based on the mapping relationship between the human retina and the camera sensor, enabling the capture of images with a human-like FOV using a commonly available uniform-pixel camera. During the second stage, a non-uniform pixel sampling approach is presented to approximate the spatial distribution of photoreceptors across the retina, combined with biharmonic spline-based interpolation for natural-looking resampling. Qualitative and quantitative results demonstrate that the foveated images generated by the proposed method exhibit better consistency with human visual perception than existing representative methods.