Intermediate grouping on remotely sensed data using Gestalt algebra

Human observers often achieve striking recognition performance on remotely sensed data unmatched by machine vision algorithms. This holds even for thermal images (IR) or synthetic aperture radar (SAR). Psychologists refer to these capabilities as Gestalt perceptive skills. Gestalt Algebra is a mathematical structure recently proposed for such laws of perceptual grouping. It gives operations for mirror symmetry, continuation in rows and rotational symmetric patterns. Each of these operations forms an aggregate-Gestalt of a tuple of part-Gestalten. Each Gestalt is attributed with a position, an orientation, a rotational frequency, a scale, and an assessment respectively. Any Gestalt can be combined with any other Gestalt using any of the three operations. Most often the assessment of the new aggregate-Gestalt will be close to zero. Only if the part-Gestalten perfectly fit into the desired pattern the new aggregate-Gestalt will be assessed with value one. The algebra is suitable in both directions: It may render an organized symmetric mandala using random numbers. Or it may recognize deep hidden visual relationships between meaningful parts of a picture. For the latter primitives must be obtained from the image by some key-point detector and a threshold. Intelligent search strategies are required for this search in the combinatorial space of possible Gestalt Algebra terms. Exemplarily, maximal assessed Gestalten found in selected aerial images as well as in IR and SAR images are presented.