Patent ID: 7400761

Claim:
A method for modeling image attention, the method comprising: preprocessing an image to generate a quantized set of image blocks; and generating a contrast-based saliency map for modeling one-to-three levels of image attention from the quantized image blocks; and performing a fuzzy growing operation to extract attended areas from the contrast-based saliency map, the fuzzy growing operation comprising: partitioning the contrast-based saliency map into two mutually exclusive areas as a function of classes of pixels comprising attended and unattended pixel areas; selecting seeds for the fuzzy growing operation according to a set of criteria such that a seed has a local maximum contrast with respect to other regional perception units and the seed belongs to an attended area; grouping pixels in the contrast-based saliency map with gray levels that satisfy criteria that indicate attended as compared to unattended areas; and iteratively growing the attended area by using grouped pixel as seeds in subsequent fuzzy growth operations until no candidates of the perception units can be grouped.