Learning to perceive transparency from the statistics of natural scenes

Anat Levin, Assaf Zoniet, Yair Weiss

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

26 Scopus citations

Abstract

Certain simple images are known to trigger a percept of transparency: the input image I is perceived as the sum of two images I(x,y) = I1(x,y) +I2(x,y). This percept is puzzling. First, why do we choose the "more complicated" description with two images rather than the "simpler" explanation I(x,y) = I1(x,y) + 0? Second, given the infinite number of ways to express I as a sum of two images, how do we compute the "best" decomposition? Here we suggest that transparency is the rational percept of a system that is adapted to the statistics of natural scenes. We present a probabilistic model of images based on the qualitative statistics of derivative filters and "corner detectors" in natural scenes and use this model to find the most probable decomposition of a novel image. The optimization is performed using loopy belief propagation. We show that our model computes perceptually "correct" decompositions on synthetic images and discuss its application to real images.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationAdvances in Neural Information Processing Systems 15 - Proceedings of the 2002 Conference, NIPS 2002
PublisherNeural information processing systems foundation
ISBN (Print)0262025507, 9780262025508
StatePublished - 2003
Event16th Annual Neural Information Processing Systems Conference, NIPS 2002 - Vancouver, BC, Canada
Duration: 9 Dec 200214 Dec 2002

Publication series

NameAdvances in Neural Information Processing Systems
ISSN (Print)1049-5258

Conference

Conference16th Annual Neural Information Processing Systems Conference, NIPS 2002
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityVancouver, BC
Period9/12/0214/12/02

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