Abstract
The many indistinguishable texture pairs having identical second-, but different third- and higher-order statistics, led to the conjecture thatglobally the preattentive texture discrimination system cannot process statistical parameters of third- or higher-order. Thus in cases when iso-second-order textures yield discrimination this must be based onlocal conspicuous features calledtextons (Julesz, 1980). Here it is shown that globally even second-order statistical parameters, such as autocorrelation, cannot be processed by the textural system, and texture discrimination is solely the result of first-order statistics (density) of textons. It is also shown that the perceivable distance of statistical constraints (coherence distance) in densely packed stochastic textures is very short, four dots or less. As of now, only three texton classes were found: color, elongated blobs (line segments) of given width, orientation, and length, and the terminators (end-points) of these elongated blobs. The strength of these textons is demonstrated by several examples.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Caelli, T., Julesz, B.: On perceptual analyzers underlying visual texture discrimination. Part I. Biol. Cybern.28, 167–175 (1978)
Caelli, T., Julesz, B., Gilbert, E.N.: On perceptual analyzers underlying visual texture discrimination. Part II. Biol. Cybern.29, 201–214 (1978)
Gagalowicz, A.: Stochastic texture fields synthesis from a priori given second-order statistics. Proc. Pattern Recognition and Image Processing Conf. Aug. 6–8, Chicago, 376–381 (1979)
Julesz, B.: Visual pattern discrimination. IRE Trans. Inf. Theory8, 84–92 (1962)
Julesz, B.: Experiments in the visual perception of texture. Sci. Am.232, 34–43 (1975)
Julesz, B.: Spatial nonlinearities in the instantaneous perception of textures with identical power spectra. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London B290, 83–94 (1980)
Julesz, B.: Textons, the elements of texture perception, and their interactions. Nature (London)290, 91–97 (1981)
Julesz, B., Gilbert, E.N., Victor, J.D.: Visual discrimination of textures with identical third-order statistics. Biol. Cybern.31, 137–140 (1978)
Julesz, B., Caelli, T.: On the limits of Fourier decompositions in visual texture perception. Perception8, 69–73 (1979)
Marr, D.: Early processing of visual information. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London B275, 483–524 (1976)
Victor, J.D., Brodie, S.E.: Discriminable textures with identical Buffon-needle statistics. Biol. Cybern.31, 231–234 (1978)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Julesz, B. A theory of preattentive texture discrimination based on first-order statistics of textons. Biol. Cybern. 41, 131–138 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00335367
Received:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00335367