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A bio-inspired contour detection model using multiple cues inhibition in primary visual cortex

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Abstract

The human visual system has efficient architecture for information reception and integration for effectively performing visual tasks like detecting contours. Physiological evidence has shown that most neuronal responses in the classical receptive field (CRF) of the primary visual cortex are modulated, generally suppressed by the non-CRF surround. These center-surround interactions are thought to inhibit or facilitate responses to edges according to other similar edges in the surroundings, which is useful for suppressing textures and enhancing contours. A biologically motivated model with subfield-based inhibition is proposed in this paper to improve the performance of perceptually salient contour detection relative to the existing single-neuron based inhibition model. A novel subfield based inhibition framework is presented, where the inhibition terms are combined with center-surround and surround-surround differences using multiple cues, including orientation based energy distribution and directional saliency within regions. Extensive experimental evaluation demonstrates that the proposed method outperforms most of competing methods, especially biological motivated ones.

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Acknowledgments

The authors appreciate the anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments on an earlier draft of this paper. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61866002), Guangxi Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. 2020GXNSFDA297006 Grant No. 2018GXNSFAA138122 and Grant No. 2015GXNSFAA139293).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Electric and Information Engineering, Guangxi University of Science and Technology, Liuzhou, 545006, China

    Chuan Lin, Ze-Qi Wen, Yi-Jun Cao & Yong-Cai Pan

  2. Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Yudao Street 29, Nanjing, China

    Gui-Li Xu

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  1. Chuan Lin
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Correspondence to Chuan Lin.

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Lin, C., Wen, ZQ., Xu, GL. et al. A bio-inspired contour detection model using multiple cues inhibition in primary visual cortex. Multimed Tools Appl 81, 11027–11048 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-022-12356-7

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