Filling in the Gaps: The Shape of Subjective Contours and a Model for Their Generation

Abstract

The properties of isotropy, smoothness, minimum curvature and locality suggest the shape of filled-in contours between two boundary edges. The contours are composed of the arcs of two circles tangent to the given edges, meeting smoothly, and minimizing the total curvature. It is shown that shapes meeting all the above requirement can be generated by a network which performs simple, local computations. It is suggested that the filling-in process plays an important role in the early processing of visual information.