Occluding Contours: A Computational Model of Suppressive Mechanisms in Human Contour Perception
(2000)- Abstract
- A fundamental problem in vision is how to identify the occluding contours of objects and surfaces, given the ambiguity inherent in low-level visual input. A computational model is proposed for how occluding contours could be identified by making use of simple heuristics that reduce the ambiguity of individual features. In the striate cortex, a large majority of cells are selective for both contrast and orientation; i.e., they respond preferentially to simple features like contrast edges or lines. The heuristics we propose enhance or suppress the outputs of model striate-cortical cells, depending on the orientation and spatial distribution of stimuli present outside of the "classical" receptive field of these cells. In particular, the... (More)
- A fundamental problem in vision is how to identify the occluding contours of objects and surfaces, given the ambiguity inherent in low-level visual input. A computational model is proposed for how occluding contours could be identified by making use of simple heuristics that reduce the ambiguity of individual features. In the striate cortex, a large majority of cells are selective for both contrast and orientation; i.e., they respond preferentially to simple features like contrast edges or lines. The heuristics we propose enhance or suppress the outputs of model striate-cortical cells, depending on the orientation and spatial distribution of stimuli present outside of the "classical" receptive field of these cells. In particular, the output of a cell is suppressed if the cell responds to a feature embedded in a texture, in which the "component features" are oriented in accordance with the orientation-selectivity of the cell. The model has been implemented and tested on natural as well as artificial grey-scale images. The model produces results that in several aspects are consistent with human contour/form perception. For example, it reproduces a number of known visual phenomena such as illusory contours, contour masking, pre-attentive pop-out (due to orientation-contrast), and it enhances contours that human observers often report perceiving as more salient. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/525876
- author
- Månsson, Jens LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2000
- type
- Working paper/Preprint
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- Cognitive Studies
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 0c41bee7-e8e2-4c90-b48a-31df6e59807c (old id 525876)
- alternative location
- http://www.lucs.lu.se/Abstracts/LUCS_Studies/LUCS81.html
- date added to LUP
- 2016-04-04 13:41:21
- date last changed
- 2018-11-21 21:15:37
@misc{0c41bee7-e8e2-4c90-b48a-31df6e59807c,
abstract = {{A fundamental problem in vision is how to identify the occluding contours of objects and surfaces, given the ambiguity inherent in low-level visual input. A computational model is proposed for how occluding contours could be identified by making use of simple heuristics that reduce the ambiguity of individual features. In the striate cortex, a large majority of cells are selective for both contrast and orientation; i.e., they respond preferentially to simple features like contrast edges or lines. The heuristics we propose enhance or suppress the outputs of model striate-cortical cells, depending on the orientation and spatial distribution of stimuli present outside of the "classical" receptive field of these cells. In particular, the output of a cell is suppressed if the cell responds to a feature embedded in a texture, in which the "component features" are oriented in accordance with the orientation-selectivity of the cell. The model has been implemented and tested on natural as well as artificial grey-scale images. The model produces results that in several aspects are consistent with human contour/form perception. For example, it reproduces a number of known visual phenomena such as illusory contours, contour masking, pre-attentive pop-out (due to orientation-contrast), and it enhances contours that human observers often report perceiving as more salient.}},
author = {{Månsson, Jens}},
keywords = {{Cognitive Studies}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Working Paper}},
title = {{Occluding Contours: A Computational Model of Suppressive Mechanisms in Human Contour Perception}},
url = {{http://www.lucs.lu.se/Abstracts/LUCS_Studies/LUCS81.html}},
year = {{2000}},
}