Significant static & dynamic structures in natural scenes for visual recognition

描述(由申请人提供)：拟议研究计划的总体目标是确定人类在积极参与自然视觉环境时所利用的视觉结构(复杂特征)和动态调节过程(适应)。我们的计划的关键是，我们认为结构和结构之间的关系而不是基于像素的对比模式是视觉的基本表征基元，我们开发了一种方法来识别这些基元。我们将在统计框架中将重要结构定义为图像属性(例如，方向、运动、对比度)的基本局部测量之间的显著高阶相关性。然后，我们将严格的心理物理方法与新的图像处理技术相结合，并与静态和头盔眼睛跟踪系统相结合，对支持识别和识别真实和抽象对象的图像特征进行系统分析。我们将从研究视力正常的人对二维静止图像的感知入手，将工作扩展到自由检查的三维自然场景的视觉和视障人士。本项工作与公共卫生的直接相关性来自提案的过渡部分。我们为视觉健康受试者开发的研究方法将直接应用于两个视障人群，总体目标是为图像增强技术、有效的低成本视觉辅助工具和视觉训练策略的发展提供信息，以最大限度地提高青光眼和老年性黄斑疾病患者的视觉功能。通过基础和应用视觉研究的结合，我们希望建立新的和有效的方法来康复这些视觉疾病。项目简介拟议研究计划的总体目标是研究健康人和视力缺陷患者如何感知他们的视觉环境，他们在物体和场景识别过程中利用哪些特征。我们将使用心理物理和眼动测量来研究静止和运动图像的感知。了解这些基本问题将使我们能够开发具体的图像增强和康复技术，这些技术可以形成有效的视觉辅助和视障干预的基础。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall goal of the proposed program of research is to identify the visual structures (complex features) and the dynamical tuning processes (adaptation) that humans utilize in perceiving their natural visual environment while they are actively engaged with it. The key element of our program is that we consider structure and relations between structures rather than pixel-based contrast patterns to be the fundamental representational primitives of vision and we develop a methodology to identify these primitives. We will define important structures in a statistical framework as significant higher order correlations among basic local measurements of image attributes (e.g. orientation, motion, contrast). We then combine rigorous psychophysical methods with new image manipulation techniques and with static and head-mounted eye tracking systems for a systematic analysis of the image features that support the identification and recognition of real and abstract objects. We will start with studies of perception of two-dimensional stationary images by normally-sighted people and expand our work to vision of freely inspected three-dimensional natural scenes and to people with visual impairment. The direct relevance of the present work to public health comes from the transitional component of the proposal. Our research methodology developed with visually-healthy subjects will be directly applied to two visually-impaired populations with the overall goal of informing the development of image enhancement techniques, effective low cost visual aids and visual training strategies to maximize visual function in patients with glaucoma and age-related macular disease. With the combination of basic and applied visual research, we hope to establish new and efficient approaches to rehabilitation of these visual diseases. Project Narrative The overall goal of the proposed program of research is to study how healthy humans and patients with visual deficiencies perceive their visual environment, what features they utilize in the during object and scene recognition. We will investigate the perception of still and moving images using psychophysical and eye-movement measures. Understanding these fundamental issues will allow us to develop specific image enhancement and rehabilitation techniques that can form the basis of effective visual aids and interventions for the visually impaired.