This book describes the design of a complete, flexible system for perceptual organization in computer vision using graph theoretic techniques, voting methods, and an extension of the Bayesian networks called perceptual inference networks (PINs). The PIN, which forms the heart of the system and which is based on Bayesian probabilistic networks, exhibits potential for application in several areas of computer vision as well as a range of other spatial reasoning tasks. The text includes a highly comprehensive, classificatory review of prior work in perceptual organization and, within that framework, identifies key areas for future work by the computer vision research community.

This lecture presents research on a general framework for perceptual organization that was conducted mainly at the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems of the University of Southern California. It is not written as a historical recount of the work, since the sequence of the presentation is not in chronological order. It aims at presenting an approach to a wide range of problems in computer vision and machine learning that is data-driven, local and requires a minimal number of assumptions. The tensor voting framework combines these properties and provides a unified perceptual organization methodology applicable in situations that may seem heterogeneous initially. We show how several problems can be posed as the organization of the inputs into salient perceptual structures, which are inferred via tensor voting. The work presented here extends the original tensor voting framework with the addition of boundary inference capabilities; a novel re-formulation of the framework applicable to high-dimensional spaces and the development of algorithms for computer vision and machine learning problems. We show complete analysis for some problems, while we briefly outline our approach for other applications and provide pointers to relevant sources.

This comprehensive and authoritative text/reference presents a unique, multidisciplinary perspective on Shape Perception in Human and Computer Vision. Rather than focusing purely on the state of the art, the book provides viewpoints from world-class researchers reflecting broadly on the issues that have shaped the field. Drawing upon many years of experience, each contributor discusses the trends followed and the progress made, in addition to identifying the major challenges that still lie ahead. Topics and features: examines each topic from a range of viewpoints, rather than promoting a specific paradigm; discusses topics on contours, shape hierarchies, shape grammars, shape priors, and 3D shape inference; reviews issues relating to surfaces, invariants, parts, multiple views, learning, simplicity, shape constancy and shape illusions; addresses concepts from the historically separate disciplines of computer vision and human vision using the same “language” and methods.

A principal challenge for both biological and machine vision systems is to integrate and organize the diversity of cues received from the environment into the coherent global representations we experience and require to make good decisions and take effective actions. Early psychological investigations date back more than 100 years to the seminal work of the Gestalt school. Yet in the last 50 years, neuroscientific and computational approaches to understanding perceptual organization have become equally important, and a full understanding requires integration of all three approaches. This highly interdisciplinary Research Topic welcomes contributions spanning Computer Science, Psychology, and Neuroscience, with the aim of presenting a single, unified collection that will encourage integration and cross-fertilization across disciplines.

This book describes the design of a complete, flexible system for perceptual organization in computer vision using graph theoretic techniques, voting methods, and an extension of the Bayesian networks called perceptual inference networks (PINs). The PIN, which forms the heart of the system and which is based on Bayesian probabilistic networks, exhibits potential for application in several areas of computer vision as well as a range of other spatial reasoning tasks. The text includes a highly comprehensive, classificatory review of prior work in perceptual organization and, within that framework, identifies key areas for future work by the computer vision research community.

Perceptual Organization for Artificial Vision Systems is an edited collection of invited contributions based on papers presented at The Workshop on Perceptual Organization in Computer Vision, held in Corfu, Greece, in September 1999. The theme of the workshop was `Assessing the State of the Community and Charting New Research Directions.' Perceptual organization can be defined as the ability to impose structural regularity on sensory data, so as to group sensory primitives arising from a common underlying cause. This book explores new models, theories, and algorithms for perceptual organization. Perceptual Organization for Artificial Vision Systems includes contributions by the world's leading researchers in the field. It explores new models, theories, and algorithms for perceptual organization, as well as demonstrates the means for bringing research results and theoretical principles to fruition in the construction of computer vision systems. The focus of this collection is on the design of artificial vision systems. The chapters comprise contributions from researchers in both computer vision and human vision.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Computer Vision Systems, ICVS 2013, held in St. Petersburg, Russia, July 16-18, 2013. Proceedings. The 16 revised papers presented with 20 poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 94 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on image and video capture; visual attention and object detection; self-localization and pose estimation; motion and tracking; 3D reconstruction; features, learning and validation.