A computational model of visual perception of surfaces

Abstract

Models of processes underlying human perception of geometric forms are helpful in addressing the nature of computations performed by the brain in understanding images from environment. Perceptual geometry is an emerging field of interdisciplinary research whose objectives focus on study of geometry from the perspective of visual perception, and in turn, apply such geometric findings to the ecological study of vision. Perceptual geometry attempts to answer fundamental questions in perception of form and representation of space through synthesis of cognitive and biological theories of visual perception with geometric theories of the physical world. The following model appeals to perceptual geometry as a framework that takes advantage of almost regularity of 2-dimensional images of surfaces, in order to estimate of their shape, orientation and other geometric features.