Abstract. We model the functional architecture of the early stages of three-dimensional vision by extending the neurogeometric sub-Riemannian model for stereovision introduced in [M. V. Bolelli, G. Citti, A. Sarti, and S. W. Zucker, Front. Comput. Sci., 5 (2024), 1142621]. A new framework for correspondence is introduced that integrates a neural-based algorithm to achieve stereo correspondence locally while simultaneously organizing the corresponding points into global perceptual units. The result is an effective scene segmentation. We achieve this using harmonic analysis on the sub-Riemannian structure and show, in a comparison against Riemannian distance, that the sub-Riemannian metric is central to the solution.

Abstract. Receptive profiles of the primary visual cortex (V1) cortical cells are very heterogeneous and act by differentiating the stimulus image as operators changing from point to point. In this paper we aim to show that the distribution of cells in V1, although not complete to reconstruct the original image, is sufficient to reconstruct the perceived image with subjective constancy. We show that a color constancy image can be reconstructed as the solution of the associated inverse problem, which is a Poisson equation with heterogeneous differential operators. At the neural level the weights of short-range connectivity constitute the fundamental solution of the Poisson problem adapted point by point. A first demonstration of convergence of the result towards homogeneous reconstructions is proposed by means of homogenization techniques.

Tree-like structures, such as retinal images, are widely studied in computer-aided diagnosis systems for large-scale screening programs. Despite several segmentation and tracking methods proposed in the literature, there still exist several limitations specifically when two or more curvilinear structures cross or bifurcate, or in the presence of interrupted lines or highly curved blood vessels. In this paper, we propose a novel approach based on multi-orientation scores augmented with a contextual affinity matrix, which both are inspired by the geometry of the primary visual cortex (V1) and their contextual connections. The connectivity is described with a 5D kernel obtained as the fundamental solution of the Fokker-Planck equation modeling the cortical connectivity in the lifted space of positions, orientations, curvatures, and intensity. It is further used in a self-tuning spectral clustering step to identify the main perceptual units in the stimuli. The proposed method has been validated on several easy as well as challenging structures in a set of artificial images and actual retinal patches. Supported by quantitative and qualitative results, the method is capable of overcoming the limitations of current state-of-the-art techniques.

This letter presents a mathematical model of figure-ground articulation that takes into account both local and global gestalt laws and is compatible with the functional architecture of the primary visual cortex (V1). The local gestalt law of good continuation is described by means of suitable connectivity kernels that are derived from Lie group theory and quantitatively compared with long-range connectivity in V1. Global gestalt constraints are then introduced in terms of spectral analysis of a connectivity matrix derived from these kernels. This analysis performs grouping of local features and individuates perceptual units with the highest salience. Numerical simulations are performed, and results are obtained by applying the technique to a number of stimuli.

In this paper we reconsider the sub-Riemannian cortical model of image completion introduced in [G. Citti and A. Sarti, J. Math. Imaging Vision, 24 (2006), pp. 307--326]. This model combines two mechanisms, the sub-Riemannian diffusion and the concentration, giving rise to a diffusion driven motion by curvature. In this paper we give a formal proof of the existence of viscosity solutions of the sub-Riemannian motion by curvature. Furthermore we illustrate the sub-Riemannian finite difference scheme used to implement the model and we discuss some properties of the algorithm. Finally results of completion and enhancement on a number of natural images are shown and compared with other models.

The visual systems of many mammals, including humans, are able to integrate the geometric information of visual stimuli and perform cognitive tasks at the first stages of the cortical processing. This is thought to be the result of a combination of mechanisms, which include feature extraction at the single cell level and geometric processing by means of cell connectivity. We present a geometric model of such connectivities in the space of detected features associated with spatiotemporal visual stimuli and show how they can be used to obtain low-level object segmentation. The main idea is to define a spectral clustering procedure with anisotropic affinities over data sets consisting of embeddings of the visual stimuli into higher-dimensional spaces. Neural plausibility of the proposed arguments will be discussed.