The goal of this project is to develop an attention-guided pattern and geospatial analysis system for imagery exploitation. This new technology will be based on the dynamic receptive field model of visual attention that has emerged from neuroscience research. The attention system holds the key to the success of the vision systems of many higher form animals struggling to survive: They see what they attend to. What is the attention system and why is it so powerful? We propose to develop a computational theory of attention and apply this theory to build an image exploitation system that can perform feature extraction, object recognition, feature registration, change detection, and related image geospatial analysis tasks.The development of this attention-guided pattern and geospatial analysis system will provide solutions to many urgent technical problems in imagery intelligence and geospatial analysis. In particular, the capability to rapidly match an invariant pattern to sensory input with myriad possible variations will have a revolutionary impact on imaging sensor technology and autonomous system design.
Keywords: ATTENTION, GEOSPATIAL ANALYSIS, CHANGE DETECTION, DYNAMICAL RECEPTIVE FIELD, INVARIANT PATTERN RECOGNITION, FEATURE REGISTRATION, IMAGERY EXPLOI
