The derivation, exposition, and justification of the Selective Tuning model of vision and attention. Although William James declared in 1890, "Everyone knows what attention is," today there are many different and sometimes opposing views on the subject. This fragmented theoretical landscape may be because most of the theories and models of attention offer explanations in natural language or in a pictorial manner rather than providing a quantitative and unambiguous statement of the theory. They focus on the manifestations of attention instead of its rationale. In this book, John Tsotsos develops a formal model of visual attention with the goal of providing a theoretical explanation for why humans (and animals) must have the capacity to attend. He takes a unique approach to the theory, using the full breadth of the language of computation—rather than simply the language of mathematics—as the formal means of description. The result, the Selective Tuning model of vision and attention, explains attentive behavior in humans and provides a foundation for building computer systems that see with human-like characteristics. The overarching conclusion is that human vision is based on a general purpose processor that can be dynamically tuned to the task and the scene viewed on a moment-by-moment basis. Tsotsos offers a comprehensive, up-to-date overview of attention theories and models and a full description of the Selective Tuning model, confining the formal elements to two chapters and two appendixes. The text is accompanied by more than 100 illustrations in black and white and color; additional color illustrations and movies are available on the book's Web site.

Visual attention is a relatively new area of study combining a number of disciplines: artificial neural networks, artificial intelligence, vision science and psychology. The aim is to build computational models similar to human vision in order to solve tough problems for many potential applications including object recognition, unmanned vehicle navigation, and image and video coding and processing. In this book, the authors provide an up to date and highly applied introduction to the topic of visual attention, aiding researchers in creating powerful computer vision systems. Areas covered include the significance of vision research, psychology and computer vision, existing computational visual attention models, and the authors' contributions on visual attention models, and applications in various image and video processing tasks. This book is geared for graduates students and researchers in neural networks, image processing, machine learning, computer vision, and other areas of biologically inspired model building and applications. The book can also be used by practicing engineers looking for techniques involving the application of image coding, video processing, machine vision and brain-like robots to real-world systems. Other students and researchers with interdisciplinary interests will also find this book appealing. Provides a key knowledge boost to developers of image processing applications Is unique in emphasizing the practical utility of attention mechanisms Includes a number of real-world examples that readers can implement in their own work: robot navigation and object selection image and video quality assessment image and video coding Provides codes for users to apply in practical attentional models and mechanisms

Visual attention is a relatively new area of study combining a number of disciplines: artificial neural networks, artificial intelligence, vision science and psychology. The aim is to build computational models similar to human vision in order to solve tough problems for many potential applications including object recognition, unmanned vehicle navigation, and image and video coding and processing. In this book, the authors provide an up to date and highly applied introduction to the topic of visual attention, aiding researchers in creating powerful computer vision systems. Areas covered include the significance of vision research, psychology and computer vision, existing computational visual attention models, and the authors' contributions on visual attention models, and applications in various image and video processing tasks. This book is geared for graduates students and researchers in neural networks, image processing, machine learning, computer vision, and other areas of biologically inspired model building and applications. The book can also be used by practicing engineers looking for techniques involving the application of image coding, video processing, machine vision and brain-like robots to real-world systems. Other students and researchers with interdisciplinary interests will also find this book appealing. Provides a key knowledge boost to developers of image processing applications Is unique in emphasizing the practical utility of attention mechanisms Includes a number of real-world examples that readers can implement in their own work: robot navigation and object selection image and video quality assessment image and video coding Provides codes for users to apply in practical attentional models and mechanisms

A cutting-edge reference source for the interdisciplinary field of computational cognitive modeling.

The more than twenty contributions in this book, all new and previously unpublished, provide an up-to-date survey of contemporary research on computational modeling of the visual system. The approaches represented range from neurophysiology to psychophysics, and from retinal function to the analysis of visual cues to motion, color, texture, and depth. The contributions are linked thematically by a consistent consideration of the links between empirical data and computational models in the study of visual function. An introductory chapter by Edward Adelson and James Bergen gives a new and elegant formalization of the elements of early vision. Subsequent sections treat receptors and sampling, models of neural function, detection and discrimination, color and shading, motion and texture, and 3D shape. Each section is introduced by a brief topical review and summary. ContributorsEdward H. Adelson, Albert J. Ahumada, Jr., James R. Bergen, David G. Birch, David H. Brainard, Heinrich H. Bülthoff, Charles Chubb, Nancy J. Coletta, Michael D'Zmura, John P. Frisby, Norma Graham, Norberto M. Grzywacz, P. William Haake, Michael J. Hawken, David J. Heeger, Donald C. Hood, Elizabeth B. Johnston, Daniel Kersten, Michael S. Landy, Peter Lennie, J. Stephen Mansfield, J. Anthony Movshon, Jacob Nachmias, Andrew J. Parker, Denis G. Pelli, Stephen B. Pollard, R. Clay Reid, Robert Shapley, Carlo L. M. Tiana, Brian A. Wandell, Andrew B. Watson, David R. Williams, Hugh R. Wilson, Yuede. Yang, Alan L. Yuille