Symmetry Detection In Human Vision
Johan P. Wagemans, Luc Van Gool, Patrick Wambacq, G. d apos Ydewalle, A. Oosterlinck · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1989
A basic assumption underlying this paper is that the construction of a high-speed, high-accuracy, and general-purpose artificial recognition system might profit from theories and data about the principles of the human visual system. More specifically, it is argued that perceptual organization in general and symmetry detection in particular are interesting processes required between the initial stage of edge detection and the final stage of object recognition. Therefore, theories and data about detection of regularities such as symmetry in human vision are summarized. Furthermore, a general scheme is proposed that might enable the detection of image regularities in a way that is in good agreement with these experimental data and theoretical models. In addition, some of our own experiments about human detection of bilateral and skewed symmetry in dot-patterns are presented to show the plausibility of the scheme. Although the results are promising, a lot of work remains to be done, both with respect to the empirical foundation of the model and with respect to its mathematical and computational specification.