Universität Bielefeld - Sonderforschungsbereich 360
Perceptual Grouping in a Neural Model:
Reproducing Human Texture Perception
Jörg Ontrup and Helge Ritter
Abstract
Texture discrimination plays an important role in image segmentation tasks. We
propose a model of visual texture perception which involves a biological motivated
feature extraction mechanism and the application of a neuro-dynamical model, the
Competitive Layer Model (CLM). After giving an introduction to the "Gestalt"-approach
of perceptual grouping, we will describe the architecture of the fully connected
recurrent CLM and propose an algorithm to efficiently simulate the dynamics of the
system. Based upoin Gabor filters we present a detailed description of how to gain a
reliable representation of texture features from images. Further stages of processing
include an early nonlinearity and the spatial pooling of the texture features. A
single interaction function between these features which involves the two principles
of similarity and proximity then allows the usage of the CLM for image segmentation.
We show that our model of texture perception can be applied to a remarkable range
of images known from pychophysical studies and that the results are in good consistence
with human introspection.
Postscript-File (~ 3064 k)
Anke Weinberger, 1998-07-13, 1999-02-16