Hierarchical - overview

The human visual system is a wonderfully interlinked, twin optical system which, by a clever sequence of essentially very simple processes, is able to yield a wealth of high resolution outputs for interpretation by the central areas of the cortex. As such, it tends to surpass most mechanical optical systems devised by mankind, despite some of the individual components being rather simple by normal optical engineering standards.

SHV aims to provide a widely interactive image processing capability which is believed, after extensive study of diverse experimental data and distillation into a coherent whole, to simulate most processes in early human vision. Thereby, it can provide, in a single processing sequence, a wide range of outputs which, in at least some respects, are superior to any which can be achieved by conventional image processing means.

For photopic (or daylight) vision, which is the main concern of this web site, the various steps of processing have been very widely researched - and checked out where possible. The whole sequence is described and demonstrated in substantial detail in the book 'Computer Vision ...'.

For the benefit of those wishing to have some appreciation of the subtleties of human visual processes, together with some evidence of their potential value in advanced image processing, there follows a hierarchical summary of the various steps with supporting pictorial demonstrations. The main steps of processing are shown as flow diagrams, with supplementary information as appropriate accessible by hyperlink on subsequent pages. For more substantial summaries and copious references to more detailed source data, see Chapter 2 of 'Vision and Acquisition' and Chapter 2 of 'Computer Vision ...'.