Bioplausible Multiscale Filtering in Retinal to Cortical Processing as a Model of Computer Vision

Abstract

Visual illusions emerge as an attractive field of research with the discovery over the last century of a variety of deep and mysterious mechanisms of visual information processing in the human visual system. Among many classes of visual illusion relating to shape, brightness, colour and motion, “geometrical illusions” are essentially based on the misperception of orientation, size, and position. The main focus of this paper is on illusions of orientation, sometimes referred to as “tilt illusions”, where parallel lines appear not to be parallel, a straight line is perceived as a curved line, or angles where lines intersect appear larger or smaller. Although some low level and high level explanations have been proposed for geometrical tilt illusions, a systematic explanation based on model predictions of both illusion magnitude and local tilt direction is still an open issue. Here a neurophysiological model is expounded based on Difference of Gaussians implementing a classical receptive field model of retinal processing that predicts tilt illusion effects.