A grouping principle and four applications

  • Agnès DESOLNEUX*
  • , Lionel MOISAN
  • , Jean-Michel MOREL
  • *Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal PublicationsJournal Article (refereed)peer-review

Abstract

Wertheimer's theory suggests a general perception law according to which objects having a quality in common get perceptually grouped. The Helmholtz principle is a quantitative version of this general grouping law. It states that a grouping is perceptually "meaningful" if its number of occurrences would be very small in a random situation: Geometric structures are then characterized as large deviations from randomness. In two previous works, we have applied this principle to the detection of orientation alignments and boundaries in a digital image. In this paper, we show that the method is fully general and can be extended to a grouping by any quality. We treat as an illustration the alignments of objects, their grouping by color and by size, and the vicinity gestalt (clusters). Collaboration of the gestalt grouping laws and their pyramidal structure are illustrated in a case study.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)508-513
Number of pages6
JournalIEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence
Volume25
Issue number4
Early online date30 Apr 2003
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2003
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

This work was partially supported by the US Office of Naval Research under grant N00014-97-1-0839, the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and the Ministère de la Recherche et de la Technologie.

Keywords

  • A contrario probabilistic model
  • Alignments
  • Binomial law
  • Clusters
  • Gestalt grouping laws
  • Histogram modes
  • Number of false alarms

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