The analysis of moving visual patterns

Movshon, J Anthony, Adelson, Edward H, Gizzi, Martin S and Newsome, William T.

Published in Pontificate Academie Scientiarum Scripta Varia, vol.54, Study Week on Pattern Recognition Mechanisms pp. 117--151, 1983.

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    • There is abundant evidence that the orientation of contours is a feature of considerable importance to the visual system. Both psychophysical and electrophysiological studies suggest that the retinal image is treated relatively early in the visual process by orientationally-tuned spatial filters (see Hubel and Wiesel, 1962; Campbell and Kulikowski, 1966, among many others). Orientational filtering undoubtedly plays a role in the analysis of the structure of a visual pattern, but the visual system has other tasks, most obviously that of extracting information about the motion of objects. A simple analysis reveals that separating a two-dimensional image into its one-dimensional (that is, oriented) components presents problems for a system concerned with extracting object motion. Here we outline the problem, propose a novel formal solution to it, and consider the applications of this solution to a variety of perceptual and electro-physiological phenomena.
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