Speaker
Description
Optogenetic gene therapy enabled partial functional vision restoration in patients with retinal degeneration, but the achieved visual acuity remains below the threshold of legal blindness. Various modifications to these therapies have been proposed to improve acuity. However, existing reports typically quantify the light sensitivity of reactivated retinas, but rarely provide corresponding estimates of visual resolution, making it difficult to predict which strategies are most suitable for clinical translation. To address this gap, we developed a computational framework that translates electrophysiological recordings from optogenetically treated retinas into predictions of achievable visual resolution. Starting from a single-cell model fitted to MEA recordings of treated rd1 mouse retinas, we build a digital retinal population and simulate visual acuity tests. Maximum-likelihood decoding then provides an upper bound on achievable acuity for each strategy. This framework enables systematic comparison across optogenetic strategies, quantifying the impact of opsin kinetics on acuity and the potential benefit of bipolar-cell targeting.
