A saliency-based search mechanism for overt and covert shifts of visual attention-英文文献.pdf

Vision Research 40 (2000) 1489–1506 locatevisres A saliency-based search mechanism for overt and covert shifts of visual attention Laurent Itti, Christof Koch * Computation and Neural Systems Program, Diision of Biology, California Institute of Technology, Mail -Code 139-74, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA Received 27 May 1999; received in revised form 19 July 1999 Abstract Most models of visual search, whether involving overt eye movements or covert shifts of attention, are based on the concept of a saliency map, that is, an explicit two-dimensional map that encodes the saliency or conspicuity of objects in the visual environment. Competition among neurons in this map gives rise to a single winning location that corresponds to the next attended target. Inhibiting this location automatically allows the system to attend to the next most salient location. We describe a detailed computer implementation of such a scheme, focusing on the problem of combining information across modalities, here orientation, intensity and color information, in a purely stimulus-driven manner. The model is applied to common psychophysical stimuli as well as to a very demanding visual search task. Its successful performance is used to address the extent to which the primate visual system carries out visual search via one or more such saliency maps and how this can be tested. © 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Visual atten