A comparison of open-loop and closed-loop stimulation strategies to control excitation of retinal ganglion cells

• We investigate the advantages of using a closed-loop strategy in neuroprosthetics.
• We set stimulation level based on continuous measurement of neural activity.
• We use Kalman decomposition to control controllable and observable part.
• Closed-loop performs better than open-loop when perturbations are introduced.

Currently, open-loop stimulation strategies are prevalent in medical bionic devices. These strategies involve setting electrical stimulation that does not change in response to neural activity. We investigate through simulation the advantages of using a closed-loop strategy that sets stimulation level based on continuous measurement of the level of neural activity. We propose a model-based controller design to control activation of retinal neurons. To deal with the lack of controllability and observability of the whole system, we use Kalman decomposition and control only the controllable and observable part. We show that the closed-loop controller performs better than the open-loop controller when perturbations are introduced into the system. We envisage that our work will give rise to more investigations of the closed-loop techniques in basic neuroscience research and in clinical applications of medical bionics.