One of the most important problems in visual perception is that of visual invariance: howare objects perceived to be the same despite undergoing transformations such as translations, rotations or scaling? In this paper, we describe a Bayesian method for learning invariances based on Lie group theory. We show that previous approaches based on first-order Taylor series expansions of inputs can be regarded as special cases of the Lie group approach, the latter being capable ofhandling in principle arbitrarily large transfonnations. Using a matrixexponential basedgenerative model of images, we derive an unsupervised algorithm for learning Lie group operators from input data containing infinitesimal transfonnations.

The observed distribution of natural images is far from uniform. On the contrary, real images have complex and important structure that can be exploited for image processing, recognition and analysis. There have been many proposed approaches to the principled statistical modeling of images, but each has been limited in either the complexity of the models or the complexity of the images. We present a nonparametric multi-scale statistical model for images that can be used for recognition, image de-noising, and in a "generative mode" to synthesize high quality textures.

Our model consists of a classical energy mechanism whose output is divided by nonclassical gain control and texture contrast mechanisms. We apply this model to review movies, a stimulus sequence that replicates the stimulation a cell receives during free viewing of natural images. Data were collected from three cells using five different review movies, and the model was fit separately to the data from each movie. For the energy mechanism alone we find modest but significant correlations (rE 0.41, 0.43, 0.59, 0.35) between model and data. These correlations are improved somewhat when we allow for suppressive surround effects (rE G 0.42, 0.56, 0.60, 0.37). In one case the inclusion of a delayed suppressive surround dramatically improves the fit to the data by modifying the time course of the model's response.

Image intensity variations can result from several different object surface effects, including shading from 3-dimensional relief of the object, or paint on the surface itself. An essential problem in vision, which people solve naturally, is to attribute the proper physical cause, e.g.

The observed distribution of natural images is far from uniform. On the contrary, real images have complex and important structure thatcan be exploited for image processing, recognition and analysis. There have been many proposed approaches to the principled statisticalmodeling of images, but each has been limited in either the complexity of the models or the complexity of the images. Wepresent a nonparametric multi-scale statistical model for images that can be used for recognition, image de-noising, and in a "generative mode" to synthesize high quality textures.

Image intensity variations can result from several different object surface effects, including shading from 3-dimensional relief of the object, or paint on the surface itself. An essential problem in vision, which people solve naturally, is to attribute the proper physical cause, e.g.

Gabor filters are used as preprocessing stages for different tasks in machine vision and image processing. Their use has been partially motivated by findings that two dimensional Gabor filters can be used to model receptive fields of orientation selective neurons in the visual cortex (Daugman, 1980) and three dimensional spatiotemporal Gabor filters can be used to model biological image motion analysis (Adelson, 1985). A Gabor filter has a complex valued impulse response which is a complex exponential modulated by a Gaussian function.

Our model consists of a classical energy mechanism whose output is divided by nonclassical gain control and texture contrast mechanisms. We apply this model to review movies, a stimulus sequence that replicates the stimulation a cell receives during free viewing of natural images. Data were collected from three cells using five different review movies, and the model was fit separately to the data from each movie. For the energy mechanism alone we find modest but significant correlations (rE 0.41, 0.43, 0.59, 0.35) between model and data. These correlations are improved somewhat when we allow for suppressive surround effects (rE G 0.42, 0.56, 0.60, 0.37). In one case the inclusion of a delayed suppressive surround dramatically improves the fit to the data by modifying the time course of the model's response.

This article is a report of the Eighth Ireland Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science (AICS-97), which was run in conjunction with the Irish Machine Vision and Image Processing Conference (IMVIP-97), held at the University of Ulster, Magee College in Derry / Londonderry, Northern Ireland, on 10 to 13 September 1997.

This paper describes a new technique for object recognition based on learning appearance models. The image is decomposed into local regions which are described by a new texture representation called "Generalized Second Moments" thatare derived from the output of multiscale, multiorientation filter banks. Class-characteristic local texture features and their global composition is learned by a hierarchical mixture of experts architecture (Jordan & Jacobs). The technique is applied to a vehicle database consisting of 5 general car categories (Sedan, Van with backdoors, Van without backdoors, old Sedan, and Volkswagen Bug). This is a difficult problem with considerable in-class variation. The new technique has a 6.5% misclassification rate, compared to eigen-images which give 17.4% misclassification rate, and nearest neighbors which give 15 .7%