No description available.

Self-calibrating eye tracker using image saliency. / Självkalibrerande ögonspårare med hjälp av image saliency.

The desire to produce artificial vision systems which behave in an intelligent, humanlike way or which can autonomously and automatically perform tasks currently only performed by humans has been a goal of Artificial Intelligence research for many decades. Until recently much of the research concentrated on extracting visual representations of objects from single, static scenes. The last decade has seen an increase in interest concerning mobile robotics for navigation, planning and autonomous control as well as for the interpretation of events in real, dynamic scenes. Presented in this thesis is research on artificial vision systems from two different, but both necessary, standpoints. One concerns low-level vision-based behaviour of object tracking based upon a naturalistic theory of perception and behaviour within living systems. The other takes a more application and engineering based approach and its goal is to address high-level scene interpretation and control of processing resources. Numerous experiments are presented to demonstrate the various issues. The two main experiments, corresponding to the two research streams, are a system which is able to fixate complex multi-coloured objects and a fully integrated vision system for predicting and following, with a mobile sensor, events in a dynamic scene.

The composition of visual landscapes significantly impacts the utilization of eye features, consequently reflected in perception. As an outstanding species, human perception holds profound planetary consequences, directly influencing experience and behavior. This paper investigated why humans have become specialized in the certain type of visual attention, referred to as fovea vision. Furthermore, it explores peripheral vision and how these two modes are stimulated by lighting. It is commonly known that we receive and process visual information very differently in fovea and peripheral vision, which suggests a difference in time perception. To quantify the seemingly unquantifiable, the sense of chronological time was used to investigate the experiential variances resulting from fovea and peripheral light stimuli. An experiment was conducted, designed based on research, where the participants were asked about sense of time, after fovea and peripheral stimuli. Despite time and resource limitations, the results do suggest that sense of time increases with peripheral stimuli, but not enough to state statistical significance. Additionally, that peripheral-time is more varied and influenced by what came before, while fovea-time remains consistent. This paper highlights the importance of considering the outer limits beyond the fovea, and suggests that doing so, can bring us closer to our surroundings through embodiment and spatial engagement.

No description available.

Recently, the advance of OCT enables a detailed examination of the human retina in-vivo for clinical routine and experimental eye research. One of the structures inside the retina of immense scientific interest is the fovea, a small retinal pit located in the central region with extraordinary visual resolution. Today, only a few investigations captured foveal morphology based on a large subject group by a detailed analysis employing mathematical models. In this work, we develop a parametric model function to describe the shape of the human fovea. Starting with a detailed discussion on the history and present of fovea research, we define the requirements for a suitable model and derive a function which can represent a broad range of foveal shapes. The model is one-dimensional in its basic form and can only account for the shape of one particular section through a fovea. Therefore, we apply a radial fitting scheme in different directions which can capture a fovea in its full three-dimensional appearance. Highly relevant foveal characteristics, derived from the model, provide valuable descriptions to quantify the fovea and allow for a detailed analysis of different foveal shapes. To put the theoretical model into practice, we develop a numerical scheme to compute model parameters from retinal \ac{oct} scans and to reconstruct the shape of an entire fovea. For the sake of scientific reproducibility, this section includes implementation details, examples and a discussion of performance considerations. Finally, we present several studies which employed the fovea model successfully. A first feasibility study verifies that the parametric model is suitable for foveal shapes occurring in a large set of healthy human eyes. In a follow-up investigation, we analyse foveal characteristics occurring in healthy humans in detail. This analysis will concern with different aspects including, e.g. an investigation of the fovea's asymmetry, a gender comparison, a left versus right eye correlation and the computation of subjects with extreme foveal shapes. Furthermore, we will show how the model was used to support investigations unrelated to the direct quantification of the fovea itself. In these investigations we employed the model to compute anatomically correct regions of interest in an analysis of the OCB and the calculation of an average fovea for an optical simulation of light rays. We will conclude with currently unpublished data that shows the fovea modelling of hunting birds which have unusual, funnel-like foveal shapes.

No description available.

Amblyopia is the leading cause of monocular visual impairment in children. Therapy for amblyopia is extremely beneficial in some children but ineffective in others. It is critical that the reasons for this discrepancy are understood. Emerging evidence indicates that current clinical protocols for the diagnosis of amblyopia may not be sufficiently sensitive in identifying individuals who, on more detailed examination, exhibit subtle structural defects of the eye. Presently, the magnitude of this problem is unknown. The aim of this study was to establish the prevalence of subtle retinal/optic nerve head defects in eyes diagnosed with amblyopia, to distinguish between possible explanations for the origin of such defects and to investigate the relationship between quantitative measures of retinal structure, retinal nerve fibre layer thickness and optic nerve head dimensions. Using the imaging technique of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) retinal structure has been investigated in detail, following the visual pathway across the retina from the fovea, via the paramacular bundle to the optic disc, where peripapillary retinal nerve fibre thickness has been imaged and subjected to detailed measures along with optic disc size and shape. The study formed two phases, the first imaging the eyes of visually normal adults and children, comparing them to amblyopes, both adults and children who had completed their treatment. The second phase, a longitudinal study, investigated retinal structure of amblyopic children undertaking occlusion therapy for the first time. By relating pre-therapy quantitative measures to the visual outcome the second phase of the study aimed to examine whether OCT imaging could identify children achieving a poor final outcome. The results show a clear picture of inter-ocular symmetry structure in all individuals, visually normal and amblyopic. Optic disc characteristics revealed no structural abnormalities in amblyopes, in any of the measured parameters, nor was there any association between the level of visual acuity and the measured structure. At the fovea differences were shown to occur in the presence of amblyopia, with thickening of the fovea and reduction of the foveal pit depth. The structural changes were found to be both bilateral and symmetrical with the fellow eye also affected. In the longitudinal phase of the study these changes were demonstrated to a greater extent in children who 'failed' to respond to treatment. This bilateral, symmetrical structural change found at the fovea, which has not been previously reported, cannot therefore be the primary cause of the visual loss which has been diagnosed as amblyopia.

nÃo hà / Imagens de fundo de olho constituem um valioso recurso para o diagnÃstico mÃdico, pois muitas vezes apresentam indicaÃÃes de doenÃas oftÃlmicas como as da retina e atà mesmo doenÃas sistÃmicas como diabetes, hipertensÃo e arteriosclerose. Esta tese trata de algoritmos de detecÃÃo de estruturas como a fÃvea, mÃcula, exsudatos e disco Ãptico (DO) em imagens de retina. Em se tratando de algoritmos de detecÃÃo da fÃvea em imagens coloridas de retina, propomos um algoritmo assim como conjunto de regras para avaliaÃÃo dos mesmos. A detecÃÃo automÃtica desta estrutura anatÃmica à um prÃ-requisito para o diagnÃstico auxiliado por computador de vÃrias doenÃas da retina, como a degeneraÃÃo macular. Entretanto, as pequenas dimensÃes e baixo contraste da fÃvea dificultam a execuÃÃo desta tarefa de detecÃÃo. O algoritmo proposto determina a regiÃo de interesse levando em consideraÃÃo as coordenadas do DO e o fato da fÃvea ser uma Ãrea escura, homogÃnea e sem presenÃa de vasos sanguÃneos. Em seguida, o mÃtodo realiza a etapa de segmentaÃÃo dos vasos e pesquisa pela janela com menor mÃdia de intensidade de cor na imagem resultante da fusÃo entre os canais vermelho e verde. Os testes do algoritmo de detecÃÃo da fÃvea foram realizados em trÃs bases de imagens pÃblicas de referÃncia ARIA, DRIVE e MESSIDOR. Neste trabalho, propomos ainda um algoritmo de detecÃÃo de exsudatos em imagens de retina. A metodologia proposta combina agrupamento nebuloso e tÃcnicas de morfologia matemÃtica. Os resultados confirmam a melhoria no desempenho do mÃtodo de detecÃÃo quando comparado aos mÃtodos disponÃveis na literatura. Portanto, comparamos os resultados de seis algoritmos automÃticos de detecÃÃo do DO disponÃveis na literatura, utilizando dados de referÃncia das bases pÃblicas ARIA, STARE, DRIVE e MESSIDOR. O objetivo era determinar a robustez dos mesmos em detectar o DO em imagens de retina saudÃveis e com a presenÃa de patologias. Observamos que em geral os mÃtodos de detecÃÃo de DO que apresentam melhor desempenho o fazem em bases menos desafiadoras como as duas Ãltimas, ou seja, eles alcanÃam as maiores taxas de acerto. / Fundus images are valuable resource in diagnosis because they often present indications about retinal, ophthalmic, and even systemic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and arteriosclerosis. This thesis focuses on algorithms to detect fovea, exudates and optic disk (OD) in retina images. Regarding fovea detection algorithms in colored retina images, we propose an algorithm and furthermore a set of rules to assess them. Automatic detection of this anatomical structure is a prerequisite for computer-aided diagnosis of several retinal diseases, such as macular degeneration. However, the small dimension and weak contrast of the fovea area on retina images make difficult this task detection, directly. The proposed algorithm determines a region of interest taking into account OD coordinates and the fact that the fovea is a homogeneous dark area without blood vessels. Then, the method performs the vessel segmentation step and searches for the lowest mean color intensity window in the image that results from the fusion between the red and green channels. Tests were carried out on three public benchmark databases. In addition, this thesis proposes an algorithm for exudate detection in retina images. The proposed methodology combines fuzzy clustering and mathematical morphology techniques. The results confirm the performance improvement provided by the proposed methodology, when comparing it to other methods available in the literature. In this work, we compare the results of six different automatic algorithms for OD detection, using the public benchmark image database named ARIA, STARE, DRIVE and MESSIDOR. We aimed to test the robustness of the algorithms in detecting the OD in healthy and pathological retina images. In general, we observed that these methods performed better in less challenging databases as the two last ones, i.e. they achieved the highest success rates in DRIVE and MESSIDOR.

Amblyopia is the leading cause of monocular visual impairment in children. Therapy for amblyopia is extremely beneficial in some children but ineffective in others. It is critical that the reasons for this discrepancy are understood. Emerging evidence indicates that current clinical protocols for the diagnosis of amblyopia may not be sufficiently sensitive in identifying individuals who, on more detailed examination, exhibit subtle structural defects of the eye. Presently, the magnitude of this problem is unknown. The aim of this study was to establish the prevalence of subtle retinal/optic nerve head defects in eyes diagnosed with amblyopia, to distinguish between possible explanations for the origin of such defects and to investigate the relationship between quantitative measures of retinal structure, retinal nerve fibre layer thickness and optic nerve head dimensions. Using the imaging technique of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) retinal structure has been investigated in detail, following the visual pathway across the retina from the fovea, via the paramacular bundle to the optic disc, where peripapillary retinal nerve fibre thickness has been imaged and subjected to detailed measures along with optic disc size and shape. The study formed two phases, the first imaging the eyes of visually normal adults and children, comparing them to amblyopes, both adults and children who had completed their treatment. The second phase, a longitudinal study, investigated retinal structure of amblyopic children undertaking occlusion therapy for the first time. By relating pre-therapy quantitative measures to the visual outcome the second phase of the study aimed to examine whether OCT imaging could identify children achieving a poor final outcome. The results show a clear picture of inter-ocular symmetry structure in all individuals, visually normal and amblyopic. Optic disc characteristics revealed no structural abnormalities in amblyopes, in any of the measured parameters, nor was there any association between the level of visual acuity and the measured structure. At the fovea differences were shown to occur in the presence of amblyopia, with thickening of the fovea and reduction of the foveal pit depth. The structural changes were found to be both bilateral and symmetrical with the fellow eye also affected. In the longitudinal phase of the study these changes were demonstrated to a greater extent in children who ¿failed¿ to respond to treatment. This bilateral, symmetrical structural change found at the fovea, which has not been previously reported, cannot therefore be the primary cause of the visual loss which has been diagnosed as amblyopia.