Includes bibliographical references (p. 250-283) and index.

From photons to image formation -- The visual system of primates -- Basic model of the retina -- Neuromorphic circuits and motion estimation -- Color processing in the retina -- Non-linear, irregular and non-stationary processes -- Cortical processing of images.

At the fascinating frontiers of neurobiology, mathematics and psychophysics, this book addresses the problem of human and computer vision on the basis of cognitive modeling. After recalling the physics of light and its transformation through media and optics, Hérault presents the principles of the primate's visual system in terms of anatomy and functionality. Then, the neuronal circuitry of the retina is analyzed in terms of spatio-temporal filtering. This basic model is extended to the concept of neuromorphic circuits for motion processing and to the processing of color in the retina. For more in-depth studies, the adaptive non-linear properties of the photoreceptors and of ganglion cells are addressed, exhibiting all the power of the retinal pre-processing of images as a system of information cleaning suitable for further cortical processing. As a target of retinal information, the primary visual area is presented as a bank of filters able to extract valuable descriptors of images, suitable for categorization and recognition and also for local information extraction such as saliency and perspective. All along the book, many comparisons between the models and human perception are discussed as well as detailed applications to computer vision.