Pre–attentive segmentation and correspondence in stereo

Abstract

Traditional stereo grouping models have focused on the problem of stereo correspondence between monocular inputs. Recent physiological data revealed that the disparity selective V2 cells increase their responses when (random–dot stereograms) stimuli within their receptive fields are at or near the boundary of a depth surface. Such highlights to depth (non–luminance) edges are seemingly not computationally required for the correspondence problem. Computationally, these highlights make the boundaries of a depth surface more salient, serving pre–attentive segmentation (between depth planes) and attracting visual attention. In special cases, they enable the psychophysically observed perceptual pop–out of a target from a background of visually identical distractors at a different depth. To achieve the highlights, mutual inhibition between disparity selective cells that are tuned to the same or similar depths is required. However, such mutual inhibition would impede the computation for the correspondence problem, which requires mutual excitation between the same cells. In this work, I introduce a computational model that, I believe, is the first to address both stereo correspondence and pre–attentive stereo segmentation. The computational mechanisms in the model are based on intracortical interactions in V2. I will demonstrate that the model captures the following physiological and psychophysical phenomena: (i) depth–edge highlighting; (ii) disparity capture; (iii) pop–out; and (iv) transparency.