[vslist] book announcement

[CHRISTOPH RASCHE]

I would like to point out the recent appearance of the following (research)
book: 

Title: The Making of a Neuromorphic Visual System
Publisher: Springer, see http://www.springeronline.com/0-387-23468-3
Author: Christoph Rasche

ABSTRACT:
The book describes a primarily computational quest for the nature of visual
category representations. The starting point for this quest is based on a
number of cognitive studies and on Palmer’s discerned formulation of the issue
of visual recognition (Palmer, 1999, Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology).
The book outlines neural architectures for region encoding and shape
representations. The operation of these architectures is demonstrated on
gray-scale images and it is discussed how these architectures may be extended
to represent basic-level categories. It is further envisioned how these
architectures could be emulated with neuromorphic hardware. The discourse is
written for anyone interested in the topics of visual object and shape
representation as well as neural coding.

OUTLINE:
Chapter 1 introduces cognitive key studies that lead to a simple formulation of
the issue of visual recognition whereby a connection is made to the idea of
representation by frames. Chapter 2 reviews previous approaches to object
recognition. Chapter 3 summarizes neuroscientific and psychological studies of
shape and object representations. Chapter 4 circumscribes the neuromorphic
approach. Chapter 5 describes a simple computer vision study that leads to
important insight on the nature of object representation. Chapter 6 suggests
some retinal circuits and mechanisms that signal contours (in gray-scale
images). Chapter 7 outlines a neural architecture for the symmetric-axis
transform (a Gestaltist-inspired region encoding mechanism): its output could
be used to perform a substantial amount of categorization. Chapter 10 proposes
an architecture for shape recognition. Chapter 11 extends the experiences made
in the previous chapters to the process of scene recognition.

Christoph Rasche