In ureter peristalsis, the orientation of the contracting smooth muscle cells is essential, yet current descriptions of orientation and composition of the smooth muscle layer in human as well as in rat ureter are inconsistent. The present study aims to improve quantification of smooth muscle orientation in rat ureters as a basis for mechanistic understanding of peristalsis. A crucial step in ou...

We have investigated orientation discrimination in visual noise using two types of high contrast, broadband stimuli. Discrimination thresholds are better for Local stimuli, in which the orientation signal is spatially limited, than for Global stimuli, in which the orientation signal extends across the entire stimulus. Performance improves with increasing stimulus area, reaching an optimum thres...

In signal processing, the approach of the analytic signal is a capable and often used method. For signals of finite length, quadrature filters yield a bandpass filtered approximation of the analytic signal. In the case of multidimensional signals, the quadrature filters can only be applied with respect to a preference direction. Therefore, the orientation has to be sampled, steered or orientati...

We present a quantitative assessment of the local and long-range horizontal connections within two separate models of layer 4 and layer 2/3 of the striate cortex. Connections between the orientation minicolumns, building the models, are developed during exposure to visual input. Layer 4 long-range horizontal connections target all orientation domains in a balanced manner, whereas local connecti...

This report describes a technique to detect curvature. The technique uses local polynomial fitting on a local orientation description of an image. The idea is based on the theory of rotational symmetries which describes curvature, circles, starpatterns etc. The local polynomial fitting is shown to be equivalent to calculating partial derivatives on a lowpass version of the local orientation. Th...

I consider how structure is derived from texture containing changes in orientation over space, and propose that multi-local orientation variance (the average orientation variance across a series of discrete images locales) is an estimate of the degree of organization that is useful both for spatial scale selection and for discriminating structure from noise. The oriented textures used in this p...

Direct examinations of gender differences in global-local processing are sparse, and the results are inconsistent. We examined this issue with a visuospatial judgment task and with a shape judgment task. Women and men were presented with hierarchical stimuli that varied in closure (open or closed shape) or in line orientation (oblique or horizontal/vertical) at the global or local level. The ta...