Hexagonal tessellations in image algebra

In image algebra '' the concept of a coordinate set X is general in that such a set is simply a subset of ndimensional Euclidean space . The standard applications in 2-dimensional image processing use coordinate sets which are rectangular arrays X 72 x ZZm. However some applications may require other geometries for the coordinate set. We look at three such related applications in the context of image algebra. The first application is the modeling of photoreceptors in primate retinas. These receptors are inhomogeneously distributed on the retina. The largest receptor density occurs in the center of the fovea and decreases radially outwards. One can construct a hexagonal tessellation of the retina such that each hexagon contains approximately the same number of receptors. The resulting tessellation called a sunflower heart2 consists of concentric rings of hexagons whose sizes increase as the radius of the ring increases. The second application is the modeling of the primary visual . The neurons are assumed to be uniformly distributed as a regular hexagonal lattice. Cortical neural image coding is modeled by a recursive convolution of the retinal neural image using a special set of filters. The third application involves analysis of a hexagonally-tessellated image where the pixel resolution is variable .