Biologically Inspired Computer Vision

As the state-of-the-art imaging technologies became more and more advanced, yielding scientific data at unprecedented detail and volume, the need to process and interpret all the data has made image processing and computer vision increasingly important. Sources of data that have to be routinely dealt with today's applications include video transmission, wireless communication, automatic fingerprint processing, massive databanks, non-weary and accurate automatic airport screening, robust night vision, just to name a few. Multidisciplinary inputs from other disciplines such as physics, computational neuroscience, cognitive science, mathematics, and biology will have a fundamental impact in the progress of imaging and vision sciences. One of the advantages of the study of biological organisms is to devise very different type of computational paradigms by implementing a neural network with a high degree of local connectivity. This is a comprehensive and rigorous reference in the area of biologically motivated vision sensors. The study of biologically visual systems can be considered as a two way avenue. On the one hand, biological organisms can provide a source of inspiration for new computational efficient and robust vision models and on the other hand machine vision approaches can provide new insights for understanding biological visual systems. Along the different chapters, this book covers a wide range of topics from fundamental to more specialized topics, including visual analysis based on a computational level, hardware implementation, and the design of new more advanced vision sensors. The last two sections of the book provide an overview of a few representative applications and current state of the art of the research in this area. This makes it a valuable book for graduate, Master, PhD students and also researchers in the field.

"This book provides interdisciplinary research that evaluates the performance of machine visual models and systems in comparison to biological systems, blending the ideas of current scientific knowledge and biological vision"--

This unique volume is a comprehensive, self-consistent coverage of one approach to computer vision, with many direct or implied links to human vision. The book is the result of many years spent by the author in research into the limits of human visual performance and the interactions between the observer and his environment. A wide-ranging and largely novel approach to computer vision is described. The treatment starts with a summary account of important aspects of human visual function. This is then followed by a progressive development of the computer image processing, from sub-pixel fragmentary edge determination to optical flow field analysis, local and global stereo analysis, colour imagery, edge-based region segmentation, perceptual texture segmentation and high fidelity contour form analysis. This treatment is considerably different from other more publicised approaches, and is highly recommended for those seeking a dynamic new approach to computer vision.

Under the title "Probabilistic and Biologically Inspired Feature Representations," this text collects a substantial amount of work on the topic of channel representations. Channel representations are a biologically motivated, wavelet-like approach to visual feature descriptors: they are local and compact, they form a computational framework, and the represented information can be reconstructed. The first property is shared with many histogram- and signature-based descriptors, the latter property with the related concept of population codes. In their unique combination of properties, channel representations become a visual Swiss army knife—they can be used for image enhancement, visual object tracking, as 2D and 3D descriptors, and for pose estimation. In the chapters of this text, the framework of channel representations will be introduced and its attributes will be elaborated, as well as further insight into its probabilistic modeling and algorithmic implementation will be given. Channel representations are a useful toolbox to represent visual information for machine learning, as they establish a generic way to compute popular descriptors such as HOG, SIFT, and SHOT. Even in an age of deep learning, they provide a good compromise between hand-designed descriptors and a-priori structureless feature spaces as seen in the layers of deep networks.

This book introduces neural mechanisms of biological vision and how artificial intelligence algorithms learn to interpret images.

As the state-of-the-art imaging technologies became more and more advanced, yielding scientific data at unprecedented detail and volume, the need to process and interpret all the data has made image processing and computer vision increasingly important. Sources of data that have to be routinely dealt with today's applications include video transmission, wireless communication, automatic fingerprint processing, massive databanks, non-weary and accurate automatic airport screening, robust night vision, just to name a few. Multidisciplinary inputs from other disciplines such as physics, computational neuroscience, cognitive science, mathematics, and biology will have a fundamental impact in the progress of imaging and vision sciences. One of the advantages of the study of biological organisms is to devise very different type of computational paradigms by implementing a neural network with a high degree of local connectivity. This is a comprehensive and rigorous reference in the area of biologically motivated vision sensors. The study of biologically visual systems can be considered as a two way avenue. On the one hand, biological organisms can provide a source of inspiration for new computational efficient and robust vision models and on the other hand machine vision approaches can provide new insights for understanding biological visual systems. Along the different chapters, this book covers a wide range of topics from fundamental to more specialized topics, including visual analysis based on a computational level, hardware implementation, and the design of new more advanced vision sensors. The last two sections of the book provide an overview of a few representative applications and current state of the art of the research in this area. This makes it a valuable book for graduate, Master, PhD students and also researchers in the field.

"This book examines modern artificial intelligence to display how it may be applied to computer games. It spans the divide that exists between the academic research community working with advanced artificial intelligence and the games programming community which must create and release new and interesting games, creating an invaluable collection supporting both technological research and the gaming industry"--Provided by publisher.