Perceptual stimulus――A Bayesian-based integration of multi-visual-cue approach and its application

With the view that visual cue could be taken as a kind of stimulus, the study of the mechanism in the visual perception process by using visual cues in their probabilistic representation eventually leads to a class of statistical Integration of multiple visual cues （IMVC） methods which have been applied widely in perceptual grouping, video analysis, and other basic problems in computer vision. In this paper, a survey on the basic ideas and recent advances of IMVC methods is presented, and much focus is on the models and algorithms of IMVC for video analysis within the framework of Bayesian estimation. Furthermore, two typical problems in video analysis, robust visual tracking and “switching problem” in muIti-targèt tracking （MTT） are taken as test beds to verify a series of Bayesian-based IMVC methods proposed by the authors. Furthermore, the relations between the statistical IMVC and the visual perception process, as well as potential future research work for IMVC, are discussed.