Pii: S0045-7906(99)00019-1

Information processing in the visual cortex of the mammalian brain allows compact image coding and representation. Receptive ®eld structures found in the visual cortex of the mammalian brain resemble Gabor ®lters. There has been recent interest in the use of such receptive ®eld pro®les for image coding and texture processing. Systems employing such Gabor ®lters have been implemented in software for a variety of applications. We believe a hardware implementation of such cells will be helpful in arti®cial visual processing. We have implemented analog VLSI cells which perform such Gabor-like functions. We describe experimental results of our circuit. We have implemented both the sine and cosine type of circuits. The sine and cosine circuits described can be used as edge detection units and on±o€ centersurround units respectively. Our circuit is the ®rst hardware implementation of a Gabor approximation circuit. # 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.