Long-Range Inhibition in Reaction-Diffusion Algorithms Designed for Edge Detection and Stereo Disparity Detection

The present paper demonstrates the significance of long-range inhibition in reaction-diffusion algorithms designed for edge detection and stereo disparity detection. In early visual systems, the long-range inhibition plays an important role in brightness perception. The most famous illusory perception due to the long-range inhibition is the Mach bands effect, which is observed in a visual system of an animal and also in the human visual system. The long-range inhibition also appears in the computer vision algorithm utilising the difference of two Gaussian filters for edge detection. Upon evidence implying analogy between brightness perception and stereo depth perception, several psychologists have suggested that such the long-range inhibition works not only in the brightness perception, but also in the depth perception. We previously proposed biologically motivated reaction-diffusion algorithms designed for edge detection and stereo disparity detection. Thus, we show that the long-range inhibition also plays an important role in both of the reaction-diffusion algorithms through experimental study. Results of the study provide a new idea of improving performance of the reaction-diffusion stereo algorithm.