Robust detection of medial-axis by onset synchronization of border-ownership selective cells and shape reconstruction from its medial-axis

Abstract

There is little understanding on representation and reconstruction of object shape in the cortex. Physiological studies with macaque suggested that neurons in V1 respond to Medial-Axis (MA). We investigated whether (1) early visual areas could provide basis for MA representation, and (2) we could reconstruct the original shape from its MA, with a physiologically realistic computational model consisting of early- to intermediate-level visual areas. Assuming the synchronization of border-ownership selective cells at stimulus onset, our model was capable of detecting MA, indicating that early visual area could provide basis for MA representation. Furthermore, we propose a physiologically plausible reconstruction algorithm with the summation of distinct gaussians. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.