10/24/2012

Office Hours
Office hours are posted on the website.
Molly: Tuesdays 2-4pm
Dr. Keister: Wednesdays 10am-12
Prof. Goldman: Wednesdays 2-3:30pm

All office hours are in the help room downstairs.

Map to Help Room (G2B90)

Lecture room

Help room

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Chapter 7: Image Processing

Eye Movement

Retinal Stabilization

Temporal Response
Persistence of vision
Zoetropes
Stroboscopes

Eye Movements

Scanning serves two purposes:

It moves different parts of the scene over the

high resolution fovea

It produces a temporal change at a fixed point on

the retina

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Concept Question

Why would you want to scan your eyes to move

the scene across the fovea?

A. The photoreceptors there are more sensitive to low

light levels
B. Cones (high resolution color vision) are concentrated
in the fovea
C. The image will be less distorted because the fovea is
in the middle of the retina
D. The nerve cells at the fovea work faster than in other
areas of the retina

Lateral Inhibition & Edge Enhancement

Remember this illusion? It only works if you
dont move your eyes.
If you move your eyes, you are causing a change
in illumination on the same part of the retina

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Eye Movement

Drifts: Slow smooth movements

Tremors: Rapid jittery movements

Saccades: Sharp, abrupt movements

Saccades and Reading Text

When reading text, your eyes skip between words

and lines, both forwards and backwards, by
means of saccades

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Saccades and Reading Text

Involuntary Eye Movements

Even when you think you are staring fixedly at
something, your eyes are still moving.

These involuntary eye movements are

responsible for the shimmering effect of certain
op art pieces

The negative afterimages of edges are overlapped

with what you are actually looking at on a very
fast timescale

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Bridget Riley, Waves

Reginald Neal, Square of Two

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Retinal Stabilization
While it is not possible to prevent your eye from
moving, it is possible to cancel out the effects of
the motion of the eye.

This is called retinal stabilization

A moving mirror is used to reflect an image such

that the image is moved to exactly counteract the
motion of the eye

Retinal Stabilization

Actual image

What is seen with retinal stabilization

A ganglion cell desensitizes within a few seconds, even if there is

an edge in its receptive field. Eye movement is necessary for our
vision to work.

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Temporal Response
The visual system response to a flash of light is
twofold:

The response is delayed slightly from the actual

flash, called latency

The response lasts longer than the actual flash,

called persistence

actual flash visual system response time

Persistence of Vision
The image of a flash or image lasts for between
1/20s (in low light) and 1/50s (in bright light)

If two images are presented in rapid succession,

faster than the persistence time, they will merge
into one image

For a series of images, this creates the illusion of

motion

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Motion
A series of images, each only slightly different
from the previous one, produces continuous
motion.
Each image is shown too quickly to process
separately, and your visual system fills in between
the images

Appearance of Motion
persistence time
delay

actual flash visual system response time

time between overlap between persistent images
frames

actual flash visual system response time

actual flash visual system response time

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Concept Question

The visual system fills in a lot of things. Which of

these are examples of this?

A. Uniform color areas between edges

B. In between successive images on a tv screen
C. Edges that arent really there
D. A and B
E. B and C

Zoetropes
Invented in the 1830s, zoetrope means, roughly,
wheel of life

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Flicker

If the time between images is not fast enough,

the motion will not be smooth, but will be jerky
or flickery

Flicker in Motion
persistence time
delay

actual flash visual system response time

time between persistent images

actual flash visual system response time

actual flash visual system response

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Which second flash will appear to flicker?

persistence time
delay

actual flash visual system response time

A
time

B
time

C
time

Stroboscope

A strobe light flashes for a short time at some

frequency

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Stroboscopic Photography
Using a strobe light to illuminate a scene for a very short
period of time, you can freeze motion that otherwise
would be a blur in the image.

Stroboscopic Photography

You can also take long exposures of a moving object

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Wagon Wheel Effect

When a regularly spoked wheel is filmed, or

illuminated with a strobe light, it will sometimes
appear to be stopped or even moving backwards.

Wagon Wheel Effect

When a regularly spoked wheel is filmed, or

illuminated with a strobe light, it will sometimes
appear to be stopped or even moving backwards.

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