The neuromorphic camera can detect motion of the vibrissae. Different moments of the animal’s behavior during a representative recording session. For images deriving from a high-speed camera (top panels), single representative frames are shown. For images from a DVS camera (bottom panels), events that occurred within the ~20 ms period were integrated and displayed. Scale bars, 5 mm.

Real-time whisker tracking using the FastEvent system. (A) Whisker-position was derived from a high-speed camera and the DVS neuromorphic camera. Top panel shows the 1 min whisker trace for the high-speed (blue) or the DVS camera (orange). Bottom panels show the wavelet (i.e. time-varying) power spectra generated from the two traces. The offline high speed camera and the neuromorphic camera tracked the whisker similarly, suggesting the Neuromorphic camera tracked whisker dynamics precisely in real-time. (C) Statistics of the difference in phase for data acquired with the two cameras. Wavelet power spectra show the differences in power spectra of whisker postion measured by the high-speed camera and the DVS camera. On the y axis, “∆phase” indicates the phase difference of the whisker position for the DVS-based tracking relative to the high-speed camera-based tracking. The corresponding Fourier frequencies are plotted on the x axis. Histograms from 4 sessions (2 sessions each for 2 animals) were averaged. Majority of differences remained within a ±15-degree range up to 30 Hz.