On the micro-saccades in the retina as a noise-enhanced processing

International audienceThe goal of the paper is to study the fluctuations the eye is subjected to, from the point of view of noise-enhanced processing. We model the retina as a simple regular sampler in space subjected to time fluctuations. We study the correlation coefficient at the output of the sampler and the continuous scene the eye is looking at. This coefficient is evaluated as a function of the fluctuations intensity, and eventually as a function of the width of the visual field that the photoreceptors may have. We show that if the length between the two points between which we measure the correlation coefficient is greater than the width of the visual field of the photoreceptors, then the fluctuations may improve the correlation coefficient, thus showing the presence of noise-enhanced processing effect in this model