Imitating human visual attention and reproducing optical illusions by ant scan

摘要

This article describes a new strategy for analyzing contours in static images. The goal of this analysis is to find the interest centers in the images and then to explain some common optical illusion phenomena. The approach proposed is based on a modified version of the Ant Colony Optimization paradigm named Ant Scan (here introduced). Ant Scan is different from the ACO meta-heuristic principally in the mechanism of exploration of the interest space (the image to be analyzed). Experimental results have shown that interactions among these new agents (based on communication by pheromone) can generate another type of emergent phenomenon that can be utilized to explain how human beings process static images. Classical optical illusions have been analyzed with this new model and a qualitative explanation of how they act is provided.