King's College London

Background: The predictive coding/biased competition (PC/BC) model of V1 has previously been applied to locate boundaries defined by local discontinuities in intensity within an image. Objective: Here PC/BC is extended to perform contour detection for colour images. Methods The proposed extensions are inspired by neurophysiological data from single neurons in macaque primary visual cortex (V1). Results: The behaviour of this extended model is consistent with the neurophysiological experimental results. Furthermore, when compared to methods used for contour detection in computer vision, the colour PC/BC model of V1 slightly outperforms some recently proposed algorithms which use more cues and/or require a complicated training procedure. Conclusions: The colour PC/BC model of V1 can successfully simulate the responses properties of orientation-selective double-opponent neuron in macaque V1 and has practical applications for contour detection in natural images.