Part of Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 9 (NIPS 1996)
José Leite, Edwin Hancock
This paper describes how the early visual process of contour organ(cid:173) isation can be realised using the EM algorithm. The underlying computational representation is based on fine spline coverings. Ac(cid:173) cording to our EM approach the adjustment of spline parameters draws on an iterative weighted least-squares fitting process. The expectation step of our EM procedure computes the likelihood of the data using a mixture model defined over the set of spline cover(cid:173) ings. These splines are limited in their spatial extent using Gaus(cid:173) sian windowing functions. The maximisation of the likelihood leads to a set of linear equations in the spline parameters which solve the weighted least squares problem. We evaluate the technique on the localisation of road structures in aerial infra-red images.