Origins of illusory percepts in digital images

Here we show the relation between illusory percepts and statistical regularities across scales and orientations. To this aim, the performance of a computational model for the partitioning of statistical regularities is analyzed on several tasks such as long-range boundary completion, phase-induced contour detection, as well as shape and size illusions. The system for the automatically learned partitioning of statistical regularities in 2D images, is based on a sophisticated, band-pass, filtering operation, with fixed scale and orientation sensitivity. Experimental results are provided to illustrate this analysis on several examples: (i) Kanizsa-type subjective figures; (ii) phase-induced subjective contours; (iii) the Zöllner illusion; and (iv) the Müller–Lyer illusion.