Some general grouping principles: line perception from points as an example

This paper first suggests some general principles for computing perceptual organization and then presents a model to group points into line contours. The grouping factors arise at two levels. At the first level, grouping factors are identified as direct point-point interaction and orientation interaction. Point-point interaction is short-ranged and homogeneous. Orientation interaction is locally oriented and mediated by local visual context. At the second level, grouping factors are global geometric binding effects arising from geometric redundancy reduction. Line perception is then generally formulated as combinatorial optimization. Since it includes local, global interactions and local context effects, the model may capture partially grouping ability of human vision systems