CS 591: Topics in Human and Computer Vision

The subject of this graduate seminar will be human and computer vision. The list of topics to be covered is flexible and may evolve to acommodate the interests of the seminar participants. Possible topics include:

• Models of human visual information processing. Especially models of perceptual completion, saliency, and grouping. Structure and function of the visual pathway. Models of ocular dominance and orientation preference structure in visual cortex.
• Psychophysics. What exactly can our eyes and brain do? How long does it take? Does performance improve with practice? Does improved performance transfer to other tasks? A sample of recent conference and journal papers will help you form an opinion about whether or not computer vision has anything to learn from psychophysics and vice versa.
• Discussion of classic (and some recent) papers in computer vision. Possible topics include object recognition, stereo correspondence, optical flow, structure from motion, and shape from texture and shading.

Reading List

• Adelson, E.H., Lightness perception and lightness illusions, The New Cognitive Neurosciences, 2nd ed., Gazzaniga (ed.), MIT Press, pp. 339-351, 2000.
• Olhausen, B.A. and Field, D.J., Natural image statistics and efficient coding, Network: Computation in Neural Systems 7, pp. 333-339, 1996.
• Boldt, M., Weiss, R., and Riseman, E., Token based extraction of straight lines, IEEE Trans. on System Man and Cybernetics 19(6), pp. 1581-1594, 1989.
• Daugman, J.G., Uncertainty relation for resolution in space, spatial frequency, and orientation optimized by two-dimensional visual cortical filters, J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 2(7), pp. 1160-1169, 1985.
• Salinas, E. and Abbott, L.F., Do simple cells in visual cortex form a tight frame?, Neural Computation 12, pp. 313-336, 2002.
• Hess, R.F., Beaudot, W.H.A., Mullen, K.T., Dynamics of contour integration, Vision Research 41, pp. 1023-1037, 2001.
• Ruderman, D.L., The statistics of natural images, Network: Computation in Neural Systems 5, pp. 517-548, 1994.
• Sun, J. Y. and Perona, P., Where is the sun?, Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science 37(4), pp. 4283, 1996.
• Koulakov, A.A. and Chklovskii, D.B., Orientation preference maps in mammalian visual cortex: A wire length minimization approach, Neuron 29(2), pp. 519-527, 2001.
• Bell, A.J. and Sejnowski, T.J., Edges are the `independent components' of natural scenes, Neural Information Processing Systems 10, MIT Press.
• Marr, D., Vision: A computational investigation into the human representation and processing of visual information, Freeman, 1980. Chapters 1-4, 7.
• Field, D.J., Hayes, A. and Hess R.F., Contour integration by the human visual system: Evidence for a local "association field," Vision Research 33(2), pp. 173-193, 1993.
• Richards, W., The approach, Natural Computation, Richards (ed.), pp. 3-13, 1988.
• Herault, L. and Horaud, R., Figure-ground discrimination: A combinatorial optimization approach, IEEE Trans. on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence 15(9), pp. 899-914, 1993.
• Kovacs, I. and Julesz, B., A closed curve is much more than an incomplete one: Effect of closure on figure-ground segmentation, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 90, pp. 7495-7497, 1993.
• Gray, C.M., Synchronous oscillations in neuronal systems: mechanisms and functions, Computational Neuroscience 1, pp. 11-38, 1994.
• Fermueller, C. and Aloimonos, Y., Direct perception of three-dimensional motion from patterns of visual motion, Science 270, pp. 1973-1976, 1995.
• Swindale, N.V., Visual cortex: Looking into a Klein bottle, Current Biology 6(7), pp. 776-779.
• He, Z.J. and Ooi, T.L., Illusory contour formation affected by luminance contrast polarity, Perception 27, pp. 313-335, 1998.
• Witkin, A.P. and Tenenbaum, J.M., On the role of structure in vision, Human and Machine Vision, Beck, Hope, and Rosenfeld (eds.), pp. 481-542, Academic Press, 1983.
• Ringach, D.L. and Shapley, R., Spatial and temporal properties of illusory contours and amodal boundary completion, Vision Research 36(19), pp. 3037-3050, 1996.
• Land, E.H. and McCann, J.J., Lightness and retinex theory, Natural Computation, Richards (ed.), pp. 177-193, 1988.
• von der Heydt, R., Peterhans, E. and Baumgartner, G., Illusory contours and cortical neuron response, Science 224, pp. 1260-1262, 1984.
• Parent, P. and Zucker, S.W., Trace inference, curvature consistency, and curve detection, IEEE Trans. on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence 11(8), pp. 823-839, 1989.
• Williams, L.R. and Hanson, A.R., Perceptual completion of occluded surfaces, Computer Vision and Image Understanding 64(1), pp. 1-20, 1996.
• Williams, L.R. and Jacobs, D.W., Stochastic completion fields: A neural model of illusory contour shape and salience, Neural Computation 9(4), pp. 837-858, 1997.
• Williams, L.R., Zweck, J.W., Wang, T. and Thornber, K.K., Computing stochastic completion fields in linear-time using a resolution pyramid, Computer Vision and Image Understanding 76(3), pp. 289-297, 1999.

Miscellany

• Mailing List
• Keith's Adelson Pattern
• My Thoughts on Kitaoka's Anomalous Motion Illusion
• RuG Gabor Demo