Visual Perception

See the Vision Group

Graduate training in perception is an interdisciplinary effort designed to give students a solid background in (1) basic perceptual phenomena and their neurophysiological underpinnings, and (2) formal models of perception drawn from mathematics and computer science. Training emphasizes both empirical and theoretical issues, and this is accomplished through jointly-supervised research projects and cross-disciplinary course work. The perception community at Rutgers, drawn from the Departments of Psychology, Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science, as well as RuCCS and Julesz' Laboratory of Vision Research, covers a wide variety of topics in both "early" and "high-level" perception and individuals' areas of expertise encompasses both empirical work and formal modeling. Faculty maintain active and visible research programs which have been supported by both federal grants and University funds. Faculty in perception work at maintaining close ties across academic disciplines and individual areas of expertise, and actively collaborate in supervision of student research.

One principal focus for collaborative efforts is the perception of motion, texture, color, shape and depth, selective attention and eye movements. Recent and ongoing interdisciplinary collaborations include several projects on nonlinear models of motion and texture perception and projects on models of localization of objects in space. Visual attention and the encoding of location and its cross-binding to motor control is another recent focus which bridges the interests of RuCCS researchers with those in the adjoining Laboratory of Vision Research (LVR). This research interest has also led to collaborative grant proposals between Pylyshyn and Burdea in CAIP Center (Computer Aids for Industrial Productivity) on teleoperation and between Pylyshyn and Kulikowski for multimedia interfaces involving gestures. Faculty working in these areas include Julesz, Kowler, Leyton, Papathomas, Kovacs, Feldman and Pylyshyn.

A second and growing area of interdisciplinary work is the development of formal models of object recognition and classification, with application to both human and machine perception. Key participants are two new faculty, Sven Dickinson (Computer Science/RuCCS) and Jacob Feldman (Psychology/RuCCS). Feldman's work, along with that of Michael Leyton, involves fundamental analysis of the genesis of form in perception. There is also an important collaborative effort centered around computer vision. This "Multimedia Imaging Group", directed by Casimir Kulikowski (Computer Science), which works on various aspects of medical imaging, automatic image segmentation and automatic semantics-based image retrieval. This group involves RuCCS and LVR researchers, as well as the Computer Science Research Laboratory and the CAIP Center. A number of research ties are maintained to faculty affiliated with CAIP, who focus on machine vision, human-computer interfaces design, speech recognition, and technical problems in virtual reality design, such as force-feedback.

Training centers around the jointly-supervised research described above and also relevant cross-disciplinary courses to give students a thorough grounding in both empirical issues and modeling. In addition, experience with applied problems in the design of computer vision and image analysis systems allows students to benefit from training opportunities provided by nearby industrial laboratories which carry out research in computer vision (e.g. NEC, SRI-Sarnoff Labs). Because vision is an integral part of the research focus of several Rutgers departments and labs, students find themselves taking courses in Psychology, Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, such as (in Bioengineering) Papathomas' course on Fundamentals of Vision, and Tzanakou's courses on Visual Pattern Recognition and Neural Networks and Leyton's course in Computational Vision. Dickinson has added a new course in Computer Vision in the Computer Science department which is expected to attract an interdisciplinary enrollment.

An important element in maintaining effective interdisciplinary efforts in perception is the Laboratory of Vision Research, directed by Bela Julesz and co-directed by Thomas Papathomas. LVR has affiliates who maintain active research programs (currently: Ilona Kovacs). Faculty and affiliates of LVR also participate in training of graduate students by serving as principal advisors, serving on committees or sponsoring special projects.