Perception-to-Image: Reconstructing Natural Images from the Brain Activity of Visual Perception.

Journal: Annals of biomedical engineering
Published Date:

Abstract

The reappearance of human visual perception is a challenging topic in the field of brain decoding. Due to the complexity of visual stimuli and the constraints of fMRI data collection, the present decoding methods can only reconstruct the basic outline or provide similar figures/features of the perceived natural stimuli. To achieve a high-quality and high-resolution reconstruction of natural images from brain activity, this paper presents an end-to-end perception reconstruction model called the similarity-conditions generative adversarial network (SC-GAN), where visually perceptible images are reconstructed based on human visual cortex responses. The SC-GAN extracts the high-level semantic features of natural images and corresponding visual cortical responses and then introduces the semantic features as conditions of generative adversarial networks (GANs) to realize the perceptual reconstruction of visual images. The experimental results show that the semantic features extracted from SC-GAN play a key role in the reconstruction of natural images. The similarity between the presented and reconstructed images obtained by the SC-GAN is significantly higher than that obtained by a condition generative adversarial network (C-GAN). The model we proposed offers a potential perspective for decoding the brain activity of complex natural stimuli.

Authors

  • Wei Huang
    Shaanxi Institute of Flexible Electronics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, 710072 Xi'an, China.
  • Hongmei Yan
    Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Metabolism and Molecular Medicine, Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
  • Chong Wang
    Shandong Xinhua Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., No. 1, Lu Tai Road, High Tech Zone, Zibo 255199, China.
  • Jiyi Li
    MOE Key Lab for Neuroinformation, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 610054, People's Republic of China.
  • Zhentao Zuo
    State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Beijing MR Center for Brain Research, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China. ztzuo@bcslab.ibp.ac.cn.
  • Jiang Zhang
    College of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610065, China.
  • Zhan Shen
    MOE Key Lab for Neuroinformation, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 610054, People's Republic of China.
  • Huafu Chen
    Key laboratory for NeuroInformation of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology and Center for Information in BioMedicine, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, PR China. Electronic address: chenhf@uestc.edu.cn.