Part of Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 4 (NIPS 1991)
Paul Cooper, Peter Prokopowicz
Network vision systems must make inferences from evidential informa(cid:173) tion across levels of representational abstraction, from low level invariants, through intermediate scene segments, to high level behaviorally relevant object descriptions. This paper shows that such networks can be realized as Markov Random Fields (MRFs). We show first how to construct an MRF functionally equivalent to a Hough transform parameter network, thus establishing a principled probabilistic basis for visual networks. Sec(cid:173) ond, we show that these MRF parameter networks are more capable and flexible than traditional methods. In particular, they have a well-defined probabilistic interpretation, intrinsically incorporate feedback, and offer richer representations and decision capabilities.