Object and scene analysis by saccadic eye-movements: an investigation with higher-order statistics
by , , , ,
Abstract:
Based on an information theoretical approach, we investigate feature selection processes in saccadic object and scene analysis. Saccadic eye movements of human observers are recorded for a variety of natural and artificial test images. These experimental data are used for a statistical evaluation of the fixated image regions. Analysis of second-order statistics indicates that regions with higher spatial variance have a higher probability to be fixated, but no significant differences beyond these variance effects could be found at the level of power spectra. By contrast, an investigation with higher-order statistics, as reflected in the bispectral density, yielded clear structural differences between the image regions selected by saccadic eye movements as opposed to regions selected by a random process. These results indicate that nonredundant, intrinsically two-dimensional image features like curved lines and edges, occlusions, isolated spots, etc. play an important role in the saccadic selection process which must be integrated with top-down knowledge to fully predict object and scene analysis by human observers.
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PDF URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156856800741216
Reference:
Object and scene analysis by saccadic eye-movements: an investigation with higher-order statistics (Gerhard Krieger, Ingo Rentschler, Gert Hauske, Kerstin Schill, Christoph Zetzsche), In Spatial Vision, Brill Academic Publishers, volume 13, 2000.
Bibtex Entry:
@Article{Krieger2000,
  author    = {Gerhard Krieger and Ingo Rentschler and Gert Hauske and Kerstin Schill and Christoph Zetzsche},
  title     = {Object and scene analysis by saccadic eye-movements: an investigation with higher-order statistics},
  journal   = {Spatial Vision},
  year      = {2000},
  volume    = {13},
  number    = {2},
  pages     = {201--214},
  month     = {nov},
  abstract  = {Based on an information theoretical approach, we investigate feature selection processes in saccadic object and scene analysis. Saccadic eye movements of human observers are recorded for a variety of natural and artificial test images. These experimental data are used for a statistical evaluation of the fixated image regions. Analysis of second-order statistics indicates that regions with higher spatial variance have a higher probability to be fixated, but no significant differences beyond these variance effects could be found at the level of power spectra. By contrast, an investigation with higher-order statistics, as reflected in the bispectral density, yielded clear structural differences between the image regions selected by saccadic eye movements as opposed to regions selected by a random process. These results indicate that nonredundant, intrinsically two-dimensional image features like curved lines and edges, occlusions, isolated spots, etc. play an important role in the saccadic selection process which must be integrated with top-down knowledge to fully predict object and scene analysis by human observers.},
  doi       = {10.1163/156856800741216},
  publisher = {Brill Academic Publishers},
  url       = {10.1163/156856800741216">http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156856800741216},
}