Saliency mapping enhanced by symmetry from local phase

We describe a method of generating saliency maps that combines symmetry with traditional contrast information. Log Gabor filtering is used to obtain local frequency information that can be used to both calculate local symmetry and edge responses. The symmetry information is combined with center-surround responses from color (either in RGB or LAB), orientation, and intensity features. The algorithm is evaluated on the Kootstra dataset and shown to significantly outperform three state-of-the-art models that utilize either contrast only or symmetry only based responses. A subjective evaluation by 13 human observers of image regions selected by 3 variants of our algorithm shows the significant benefit of including symmetry information in addition to contrast-based features.