Abstract
This study explored human ability to extract closed boundary of a target shape in the presence of noise using spatially global operations. Specifically, we investigated the contributions of contour-based processing using line edges and region-based processing using color, as well as their interaction. Performance of the subjects was reliable when the fixation was inside the shape, and it was much less reliable when the fixation was outside. With fixation inside the shape, performance was higher when both contour and color information were present compared to when only one of them was present. We propose a biologically-inspired model to emulate human boundary extraction. The model solves the shortest (least-cost) path in the log-polar representation, a representation which is a good approximation to the mapping from the retina to the visual cortex. Boundary extraction was framed as a global optimization problem with the costs of connections calculated using four features: distance of interpolation, turning angle, color similarity and color contrast. This model was tested on some of the conditions that were used in the psychophysical experiment and its performance was similar to the performance of subjects.