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27 results (View BibTeX file of all listed publications)

2014

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Dynamical source analysis of hippocampal sharp-wave ripple episodes

Ramirez-Villegas, J. F., Logothetis, N. K., Besserve, M.

Bernstein Conference, 2014 (poster)

DOI [BibTex]

2014

Ramirez-Villegas, J. F., Logothetis, N. K., Besserve, M. Dynamical source analysis of hippocampal sharp-wave ripple episodes Bernstein Conference, 2014 (poster)

DOI [BibTex]

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FID-guided retrospective motion correction based on autofocusing

Babayeva, M., Loktyushin, A., Kober, T., Granziera, C., Nickisch, H., Gruetter, R., Krueger, G.

Joint Annual Meeting ISMRM-ESMRMB, Milano, Italy, 2014 (poster)

[BibTex]

Babayeva, M., Loktyushin, A., Kober, T., Granziera, C., Nickisch, H., Gruetter, R., Krueger, G. FID-guided retrospective motion correction based on autofocusing Joint Annual Meeting ISMRM-ESMRMB, Milano, Italy, 2014 (poster)

[BibTex]

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Cluster analysis of sharp-wave ripple field potential signatures in the macaque hippocampus

Ramirez-Villegas, J. F., Logothetis, N. K., Besserve, M.

Computational and Systems Neuroscience Meeting (COSYNE), 2014 (poster)

[BibTex]

Ramirez-Villegas, J. F., Logothetis, N. K., Besserve, M. Cluster analysis of sharp-wave ripple field potential signatures in the macaque hippocampus Computational and Systems Neuroscience Meeting (COSYNE), 2014 (poster)

[BibTex]

2013

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Coupling between spiking activity and beta band spatio-temporal patterns in the macaque PFC

Safavi, S., Panagiotaropoulos, T., Kapoor, V., Logothetis, N., Besserve, M.

43rd Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience (Neuroscience), 2013 (poster)

[BibTex]

2013

Safavi, S., Panagiotaropoulos, T., Kapoor, V., Logothetis, N., Besserve, M. Coupling between spiking activity and beta band spatio-temporal patterns in the macaque PFC 43rd Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience (Neuroscience), 2013 (poster)

[BibTex]

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Gaussian Process Vine Copulas for Multivariate Dependence

Lopez-Paz, D., Hernandez-Lobato, J., Ghahramani, Z.

International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2013 (poster)

PDF [BibTex]

Lopez-Paz, D., Hernandez-Lobato, J., Ghahramani, Z. Gaussian Process Vine Copulas for Multivariate Dependence International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2013 (poster)

PDF [BibTex]

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Domain Generalization via Invariant Feature Representation

Muandet, K., Balduzzi, D., Schölkopf, B.

30th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML2013), 2013 (poster)

PDF [BibTex]

Muandet, K., Balduzzi, D., Schölkopf, B. Domain Generalization via Invariant Feature Representation 30th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML2013), 2013 (poster)

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Analyzing locking of spikes to spatio-temporal patterns in the macaque prefrontal cortex

Safavi, S., Panagiotaropoulos, T., Kapoor, V., Logothetis, N., Besserve, M.

Bernstein Conference, 2013 (poster)

DOI [BibTex]

Safavi, S., Panagiotaropoulos, T., Kapoor, V., Logothetis, N., Besserve, M. Analyzing locking of spikes to spatio-temporal patterns in the macaque prefrontal cortex Bernstein Conference, 2013 (poster)

DOI [BibTex]

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One-class Support Measure Machines for Group Anomaly Detection

Muandet, K., Schölkopf, B.

29th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI), 2013 (poster)

PDF [BibTex]

Muandet, K., Schölkopf, B. One-class Support Measure Machines for Group Anomaly Detection 29th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI), 2013 (poster)

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The Randomized Dependence Coefficient

Lopez-Paz, D., Hennig, P., Schölkopf, B.

Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), 2013 (poster)

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Lopez-Paz, D., Hennig, P., Schölkopf, B. The Randomized Dependence Coefficient Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), 2013 (poster)

PDF [BibTex]

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Characterization of different types of sharp-wave ripple signatures in the CA1 of the macaque hippocampus

Ramirez-Villegas, J., Logothetis, N., Besserve, M.

4th German Neurophysiology PhD Meeting Networks, 2013 (poster)

Web [BibTex]

Ramirez-Villegas, J., Logothetis, N., Besserve, M. Characterization of different types of sharp-wave ripple signatures in the CA1 of the macaque hippocampus 4th German Neurophysiology PhD Meeting Networks, 2013 (poster)

Web [BibTex]

2011

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Spatiotemporal mapping of rhythmic activity in the inferior convexity of the macaque prefrontal cortex

Panagiotaropoulos, T., Besserve, M., Crocker, B., Kapoor, V., Tolias, A., Panzeri, S., Logothetis, N.

41(239.15), 41st Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience (Neuroscience), November 2011 (poster)

Abstract
The inferior convexity of the macaque prefrontal cortex (icPFC) is known to be involved in higher order processing of sensory information mediating stimulus selection, attention and working memory. Until now, the vast majority of electrophysiological investigations of the icPFC employed single electrode recordings. As a result, relatively little is known about the spatiotemporal structure of neuronal activity in this cortical area. Here we study in detail the spatiotemporal properties of local field potentials (LFP's) in the icPFC using multi electrode recordings during anesthesia. We computed the LFP-LFP coherence as a function of frequency for thousands of pairs of simultaneously recorded sites anterior to the arcuate and inferior to the principal sulcus. We observed two distinct peaks of coherent oscillatory activity between approximately 4-10 and 15-25 Hz. We then quantified the instantaneous phase of these frequency bands using the Hilbert transform and found robust phase gradients across recording sites. The dependency of the phase on the spatial location reflects the existence of traveling waves of electrical activity in the icPFC. The dominant axis of these traveling waves roughly followed the ventral-dorsal plane. Preliminary results show that repeated visual stimulation with a 10s movie had no dramatic effect on the spatial structure of the traveling waves. Traveling waves of electrical activity in the icPFC could reflect highly organized cortical processing in this area of prefrontal cortex.

Web [BibTex]

2011

Panagiotaropoulos, T., Besserve, M., Crocker, B., Kapoor, V., Tolias, A., Panzeri, S., Logothetis, N. Spatiotemporal mapping of rhythmic activity in the inferior convexity of the macaque prefrontal cortex 41(239.15), 41st Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience (Neuroscience), November 2011 (poster)

Web [BibTex]

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Evaluation and Optimization of MR-Based Attenuation Correction Methods in Combined Brain PET/MR

Mantlik, F., Hofmann, M., Bezrukov, I., Schmidt, H., Kolb, A., Beyer, T., Reimold, M., Schölkopf, B., Pichler, B.

2011(MIC18.M-96), 2011 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium, Medical Imaging Conference (NSS-MIC), October 2011 (poster)

Abstract
Combined PET/MR provides simultaneous molecular and functional information in an anatomical context with unique soft tissue contrast. However, PET/MR does not support direct derivation of attenuation maps of objects and tissues within the measured PET field-of-view. Valid attenuation maps are required for quantitative PET imaging, specifically for scientific brain studies. Therefore, several methods have been proposed for MR-based attenuation correction (MR-AC). Last year, we performed an evaluation of different MR-AC methods, including simple MR thresholding, atlas- and machine learning-based MR-AC. CT-based AC served as gold standard reference. RoIs from 2 anatomic brain atlases with different levels of detail were used for evaluation of correction accuracy. We now extend our evaluation of different MR-AC methods by using an enlarged dataset of 23 patients from the integrated BrainPET/MR (Siemens Healthcare). Further, we analyze options for improving the MR-AC performance in terms of speed and accuracy. Finally, we assess the impact of ignoring BrainPET positioning aids during the course of MR-AC. This extended study confirms the overall prediction accuracy evaluation results of the first evaluation in a larger patient population. Removing datasets affected by metal artifacts from the Atlas-Patch database helped to improve prediction accuracy, although the size of the database was reduced by one half. Significant improvement in prediction speed can be gained at a cost of only slightly reduced accuracy, while further optimizations are still possible.

Web [BibTex]

Mantlik, F., Hofmann, M., Bezrukov, I., Schmidt, H., Kolb, A., Beyer, T., Reimold, M., Schölkopf, B., Pichler, B. Evaluation and Optimization of MR-Based Attenuation Correction Methods in Combined Brain PET/MR 2011(MIC18.M-96), 2011 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium, Medical Imaging Conference (NSS-MIC), October 2011 (poster)

Web [BibTex]

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Atlas- and Pattern Recognition Based Attenuation Correction on Simultaneous Whole-Body PET/MR

Bezrukov, I., Schmidt, H., Mantlik, F., Schwenzer, N., Hofmann, M., Schölkopf, B., Pichler, B.

2011(MIC18.M-116), 2011 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium, Medical Imaging Conference (NSS-MIC), October 2011 (poster)

Abstract
With the recent availability of clinical whole-body PET/MRI it is possible to evaluate and further develop MR-based attenuation correction methods using simultaneously acquired PET/MR data. We present first results for MRAC on patient data acquired on a fully integrated whole-body PET/MRI (Biograph mMR, Siemens) using our method that applies atlas registration and pattern recognition (ATPR) and compare them to the segmentation-based (SEG) method provided by the manufacturer. The ATPR method makes use of a database of previously aligned pairs of MR-CT volumes to predict attenuation values on a continuous scale. The robustness of the method in presence of MR artifacts was improved by location and size based detection. Lesion to liver and lesion to blood ratios (LLR and LBR) were compared for both methods on 29 iso-contour ROIs in 4 patients. ATPR showed >20% higher LBR and LLR for ROIs in and >7% near osseous tissue. For ROIs in soft tissue, both methods yielded similar ratios with max. differences <6% . For ROIs located within metal artifacts in the MR image, ATPR showed >190% higher LLR and LBR than SEG, where ratios <0.1 occured. For lesions in the neighborhood of artifacts, both ratios were >15% higher for ATPR. If artifacts in MR volumes caused by metal implants are not accounted for in the computation of attenuation maps, they can lead to a strong decrease of lesion to background ratios, even to disappearance of hot spots. Metal implants are likely to occur in the patient collective receiving combined PET/MR scans, of our first 10 patients, 3 had metal implants. Our method is currently able to account for artifacts in the pelvis caused by prostheses. The ability of the ATPR method to account for bone leads to a significant increase of LLR and LBR in osseous tissue, which supports our previous evaluations with combined PET/CT and PET/MR data. For lesions within soft tissue, lesion to background ratios of ATPR and SEG were comparable.

Web [BibTex]

Bezrukov, I., Schmidt, H., Mantlik, F., Schwenzer, N., Hofmann, M., Schölkopf, B., Pichler, B. Atlas- and Pattern Recognition Based Attenuation Correction on Simultaneous Whole-Body PET/MR 2011(MIC18.M-116), 2011 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium, Medical Imaging Conference (NSS-MIC), October 2011 (poster)

Web [BibTex]

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Retrospective blind motion correction of MR images

Loktyushin, A., Nickisch, H., Pohmann, R.

Magnetic Resonance Materials in Physics, Biology and Medicine, 24(Supplement 1):498, 28th Annual Scientific Meeting ESMRMB, October 2011 (poster)

Abstract
We present a retrospective method, which significantly reduces ghosting and blurring artifacts due to subject motion. No modifications to the sequence (as in [2, 3]), or the use of additional equipment (as in [1]) are required. Our method iteratively searches for the transformation, that applied to the lines in k-space -- yields the sparsest Laplacian filter output in the spatial domain.

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

Loktyushin, A., Nickisch, H., Pohmann, R. Retrospective blind motion correction of MR images Magnetic Resonance Materials in Physics, Biology and Medicine, 24(Supplement 1):498, 28th Annual Scientific Meeting ESMRMB, October 2011 (poster)

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

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Model based reconstruction for GRE EPI

Blecher, W., Pohmann, R., Schölkopf, B., Seeger, M.

Magnetic Resonance Materials in Physics, Biology and Medicine, 24(Supplement 1):493-494, 28th Annual Scientific Meeting ESMRMB, October 2011 (poster)

Abstract
Model based nonlinear image reconstruction methods for MRI [3] are at the heart of modern reconstruction techniques (e.g.compressed sensing [6]). In general, models are expressed as a matrix equation where y and u are column vectors of k-space and image data, X model matrix and e independent noise. However, solving the corresponding linear system is not tractable. Therefore fast nonlinear algorithms that minimize a function wrt.the unknown image are the method of choice: In this work a model for gradient echo EPI, is proposed that incorporates N/2 Ghost correction and correction for field inhomogeneities. In addition to reconstruction from full data, the model allows for sparse reconstruction, joint estimation of image, field-, and relaxation-map (like [5,8] for spiral imaging), and improved N/2 ghost correction.

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

Blecher, W., Pohmann, R., Schölkopf, B., Seeger, M. Model based reconstruction for GRE EPI Magnetic Resonance Materials in Physics, Biology and Medicine, 24(Supplement 1):493-494, 28th Annual Scientific Meeting ESMRMB, October 2011 (poster)

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

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Simultaneous multimodal imaging of patients with bronchial carcinoma in a whole body MR/PET system

Brendle, C., Sauter, A., Schmidt, H., Schraml, C., Bezrukov, I., Martirosian, P., Hetzel, J., Müller, M., Claussen, C., Schwenzer, N., Pfannenberg, C.

Magnetic Resonance Materials in Physics, Biology and Medicine, 24(Supplement 1):141, 28th annual scientific meeting of the European Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine and Biology (ESMRB), October 2011 (poster)

Abstract
Purpose/Introduction: Lung cancer is among the most frequent cancers (1). Exact determination of tumour extent and viability is crucial for adequate therapy guidance. [18F]-FDG-PET allows accurate staging and the evaluation of therapy response based on glucose metabolism. Diffusion weighted MRI (DWI) is another promising tool for the evaluation of tumour viability (2,3). The aim of the study was the simultaneous PET-MR acquisition in lung cancer patients and correlation of PET and MR data. Subjects and Methods: Seven patients (age 38-73 years, mean 61 years) with highly suspected or known bronchial carcinoma were examined. First, a [18F]-FDG-PET/CT was performed (injected dose: 332-380 MBq). Subsequently, patients were examined at the whole-body MR/PET (Siemens Biograph mMR). The MRI is a modified 3T Verio whole body system with a magnet bore of 60 cm (max. amplitude gradients 45 mT/m, max. slew rate 200 T/m/s). Concerning the PET, the whole-body MR/PET system comprises 56 detector cassettes with a 59.4 cm transaxial and 25.8 cm axial FoV. The following parameters for PET acquisition were applied: 2 bed positions, 6 min/bed with an average uptake time of 124 min after injection (range: 110-143 min). The attenuation correction of PET data was conducted with a segmentation-based method provided by the manufacturer. Acquired PET data were reconstructed with an iterative 3D OSEM algorithm using 3 iterations and 21 subsets, Gaussian filter of 3 mm. DWI MR images were recorded simultaneously for each bed using two b-values (0/800 s/mm2). SUVmax and ADCmin were assessed in a ROI analysis. The following ratios were calculated: SUVmax(tumor)/SUVmean(liver) and ADCmin(tumor)/ADCmean(muscle). Correlation between SUV and ADC was analyzed (Pearson’s correlation). Results: Diagnostic scans could be obtained in all patients with good tumour delineation. The spatial matching of PET and DWI data was very exact. Most tumours showed a pronounced FDG-uptake in combination with decreased ADC values. Significant correlation was found between SUV and ADC ratios (r = -0.87, p = 0.0118). Discussion/Conclusion: Simultaneous MR/PET imaging of lung cancer is feasible. The whole-body MR/PET system can provide complementary information regarding tumour viability and cellularity which could facilitate a more profound tumour characterization. Further studies have to be done to evaluate the importance of these parameters for therapy decisions and monitoring

Web DOI [BibTex]

Brendle, C., Sauter, A., Schmidt, H., Schraml, C., Bezrukov, I., Martirosian, P., Hetzel, J., Müller, M., Claussen, C., Schwenzer, N., Pfannenberg, C. Simultaneous multimodal imaging of patients with bronchial carcinoma in a whole body MR/PET system Magnetic Resonance Materials in Physics, Biology and Medicine, 24(Supplement 1):141, 28th annual scientific meeting of the European Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine and Biology (ESMRB), October 2011 (poster)

Web DOI [BibTex]

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Support Vector Machines for finding deletions and short insertions using paired-end short reads

Grimm, D., Hagmann, J., König, D., Weigel, D., Borgwardt, KM.

International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB), 2011 (poster)

Web [BibTex]

Grimm, D., Hagmann, J., König, D., Weigel, D., Borgwardt, KM. Support Vector Machines for finding deletions and short insertions using paired-end short reads International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB), 2011 (poster)

Web [BibTex]

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Statistical estimation for optimization problems on graphs

Langovoy, M., Sra, S.

Empirical Inference Symposium, 2011 (poster)

[BibTex]

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Transfer Learning with Copulas

Lopez-Paz, D., Hernandez-Lobato, J.

Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), 2011 (poster)

PDF [BibTex]

Lopez-Paz, D., Hernandez-Lobato, J. Transfer Learning with Copulas Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), 2011 (poster)

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2002

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Surface-slant-from-texture discrimination: Effects of slant level and texture type

Rosas, P., Wichmann, F., Wagemans, J.

Journal of Vision, 2(7):300, Second Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), November 2002 (poster)

Abstract
The problem of surface-slant-from-texture was studied psychophysically by measuring the performances of five human subjects in a slant-discrimination task with a number of different types of textures: uniform lattices, randomly displaced lattices, polka dots, Voronoi tessellations, orthogonal sinusoidal plaid patterns, fractal or 1/f noise, “coherent” noise and a “diffusion-based” texture (leopard skin-like). The results show: (1) Improving performance with larger slants for all textures. (2) A “non-symmetrical” performance around a particular slant characterized by a psychometric function that is steeper in the direction of the more slanted orientation. (3) For sufficiently large slants (66 deg) there are no major differences in performance between any of the different textures. (4) For slants at 26, 37 and 53 degrees, however, there are marked differences between the different textures. (5) The observed differences in performance across textures for slants up to 53 degrees are systematic within subjects, and nearly so across them. This allows a rank-order of textures to be formed according to their “helpfulness” — that is, how easy the discrimination task is when a particular texture is mapped on the surface. Polka dots tended to allow the best slant discrimination performance, noise patterns the worst up to the large slant of 66 degrees at which performance was almost independent of the particular texture chosen. Finally, our large number of 2AFC trials (approximately 2800 trials per texture across subjects) and associated tight confidence intervals may enable us to find out about which statistical properties of the textures could be responsible for surface-slant-from-texture estimation, with the ultimate goal of being able to predict observer performance for any arbitrary texture.

Web DOI [BibTex]

2002

Rosas, P., Wichmann, F., Wagemans, J. Surface-slant-from-texture discrimination: Effects of slant level and texture type Journal of Vision, 2(7):300, Second Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), November 2002 (poster)

Web DOI [BibTex]

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Modelling Contrast Transfer in Spatial Vision

Wichmann, F.

Journal of Vision, 2(10):7, Second Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), November 2002 (poster)

Abstract
Much of our information about spatial vision comes from detection experiments involving low-contrast stimuli. Contrast discrimination experiments provide one way to explore the visual system's response to stimuli of higher contrast, the results of which allow different models of contrast processing (e.g. energy versus gain-control models) to be critically assessed (Wichmann & Henning, 1999). Studies of detection and discrimination using pulse train stimuli in noise, on the other hand, make predictions about the number, position and properties of noise sources within the processing stream (Henning, Bird & Wichmann, 2002). Here I report modelling results combining data from both sinusoidal and pulse train experiments in and without noise to arrive at a more tightly constrained model of early spatial vision.

Web DOI [BibTex]

Wichmann, F. Modelling Contrast Transfer in Spatial Vision Journal of Vision, 2(10):7, Second Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), November 2002 (poster)

Web DOI [BibTex]

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Pulse train detection and discrimination in pink noise

Henning, G., Wichmann, F., Bird, C.

Journal of Vision, 2(7):229, Second Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), November 2002 (poster)

Abstract
Much of our information about spatial vision comes from detection experiments involving low-contrast stimuli. Contrast discrimination experiments provide one way to explore the visual system's response to stimuli of higher contrast. We explored both detection and contrast discrimination performance with sinusoidal and "pulse-train" (or line) gratings. Both types of grating had a fundamental spatial frequency of 2.09-c/deg but the pulse-train, ideally, contains, in addition to its fundamental component, all the harmonics of the fundamental. Although the 2.09-c/deg pulse-train produced on the display was measured and shown to contain at least 8 harmonics at equal contrast, it was no more detectable than its most detectable component; no benefit from having additional information at the harmonics was measurable. The addition of broadband "pink" noise, designed to equalize the detectability of the components of the pulse train, made it about a factor of four more detectable than any of its components. However, in contrast-discrimination experiments, with an in-phase pedestal or masking grating of the same form and phase as the signal and 15% contrast, the noise did not improve the discrimination performance of the pulse train relative to that of its sinusoidal components. In contrast, a 2.09-c/deg "super train," constructed to have 8 equally detectable harmonics, was a factor of five more detectable than any of its components. We discuss the implications of these observations for models of early vision in particular the implications for possible sources of internal noise.

Web DOI [BibTex]

Henning, G., Wichmann, F., Bird, C. Pulse train detection and discrimination in pink noise Journal of Vision, 2(7):229, Second Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), November 2002 (poster)

Web DOI [BibTex]

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Phase information in the recognition of natural images

Braun, D., Wichmann, F., Gegenfurtner, K.

Perception, 31(ECVP Abstract Supplement):133, 25th European Conference on Visual Perception, August 2002 (poster)

Abstract
Fourier phase plays an important role in determining global image structure. For example, when the phase spectrum of an image of a flower is swapped with that of a tank, we usually perceive a tank, even though the amplitude spectrum is still that of the flower. Similarly, when the phase spectrum of an image is randomly swapped across frequencies, that is its Fourier energy is randomly distributed over the image, the resulting image becomes impossible to recognise. Our goal was to evaluate the effect of phase manipulations in a quantitative manner. Subjects viewed two images of natural scenes, one of which contained an animal (the target) embedded in the background. The spectra of the images were manipulated by adding random phase noise at each frequency. The phase noise was the independent variable, uniformly distributed between 0° and ±180°. Subjects were remarkably resistant to phase noise. Even with ±120° noise, subjects were still 75% correct. The proportion of correct answers closely followed the correlation between original and noise-distorted images. Thus it appears as if it was not the global phase information per se that determines our percept of natural images, but rather the effect of phase on local image features.

Web [BibTex]

Braun, D., Wichmann, F., Gegenfurtner, K. Phase information in the recognition of natural images Perception, 31(ECVP Abstract Supplement):133, 25th European Conference on Visual Perception, August 2002 (poster)

Web [BibTex]

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Detection and discrimination in pink noise

Wichmann, F., Henning, G.

5, pages: 100, 5. T{\"u}binger Wahrnehmungskonferenz (TWK), February 2002 (poster)

Abstract
Much of our information about early spatial vision comes from detection experiments involving low-contrast stimuli, which are not, perhaps, particularly "natural" stimuli. Contrast discrimination experiments provide one way to explore the visual system's response to stimuli of higher contrast whilst keeping the number of unknown parameters comparatively small. We explored both detection and contrast discrimination performance with sinusoidal and "pulse-train" (or line) gratings. Both types of grating had a fundamental spatial frequency of 2.09-c/deg but the pulse-train, ideally, contains, in addition to its fundamental component, all the harmonics of the fundamental. Although the 2.09-c/deg pulse-train produced on our display was measured using a high-performance digital camera (Photometrics) and shown to contain at least 8 harmonics at equal contrast, it was no more detectable than its most detectable component; no benefit from having additional information at the harmonics was measurable. The addition of broadband 1-D "pink" noise made it about a factor of four more detectable than any of its components. However, in contrast-discrimination experiments, with an in-phase pedestal or masking grating of the same form and phase as the signal and 15% contrast, the noise did not improve the discrimination performance of the pulse train relative to that of its sinusoidal components. We discuss the implications of these observations for models of early vision in particular the implications for possible sources of internal noise.

Web [BibTex]

Wichmann, F., Henning, G. Detection and discrimination in pink noise 5, pages: 100, 5. T{\"u}binger Wahrnehmungskonferenz (TWK), February 2002 (poster)

Web [BibTex]

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Application of Monte Carlo Methods to Psychometric Function Fitting

Wichmann, F.

Proceedings of the 33rd European Conference on Mathematical Psychology, pages: 44, 2002 (poster)

Abstract
The psychometric function relates an observer's performance to an independent variable, usually some physical quantity of a stimulus in a psychophysical task. Here I describe methods to (1) fitting psychometric functions, (2) assessing goodness-of-fit, and (3) providing confidence intervals for the function's parameters and other estimates derived from them. First I describe a constrained maximum-likelihood method for parameter estimation. Using Monte-Carlo simulations I demonstrate that it is important to have a fitting method that takes stimulus-independent errors (or "lapses") into account. Second, a number of goodness-of-fit tests are introduced. Because psychophysical data sets are usually rather small I advocate the use of Monte Carlo resampling techniques that do not rely on asymptotic theory for goodness-of-fit assessment. Third, a parametric bootstrap is employed to estimate the variability of fitted parameters and derived quantities such as thresholds and slopes. I describe how the bootstrap bridging assumption, on which the validity of the procedure depends, can be tested without incurring too high a cost in computation time. Finally I describe how the methods can be extended to test hypotheses concerning the form and shape of several psychometric functions. Software describing the methods is available (http://www.bootstrap-software.com/psignifit/), as well as articles describing the methods in detail (Wichmann&Hill, Perception&Psychophysics, 2001a,b).

[BibTex]

Wichmann, F. Application of Monte Carlo Methods to Psychometric Function Fitting Proceedings of the 33rd European Conference on Mathematical Psychology, pages: 44, 2002 (poster)

[BibTex]

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Optimal linear estimation of self-motion - a real-world test of a model of fly tangential neurons

Franz, MO.

SAB 02 Workshop, Robotics as theoretical biology, 7th meeting of the International Society for Simulation of Adaptive Behaviour (SAB), (Editors: Prescott, T.; Webb, B.), 2002 (poster)

Abstract
The tangential neurons in the fly brain are sensitive to the typical optic flow patterns generated during self-motion (see example in Fig.1). We examine whether a simplified linear model of these neurons can be used to estimate self-motion from the optic flow. We present a theory for the construction of an optimal linear estimator incorporating prior knowledge both about the distance distribution of the environment, and about the noise and self-motion statistics of the sensor. The optimal estimator is tested on a gantry carrying an omnidirectional vision sensor that can be moved along three translational and one rotational degree of freedom. The experiments indicate that the proposed approach yields accurate results for rotation estimates, independently of the current translation and scene layout. Translation estimates, however, turned out to be sensitive to simultaneous rotation and to the particular distance distribution of the scene. The gantry experiments confirm that the receptive field organization of the tangential neurons allows them, as an ensemble, to extract self-motion from the optic flow.

PDF [BibTex]

Franz, MO. Optimal linear estimation of self-motion - a real-world test of a model of fly tangential neurons SAB 02 Workshop, Robotics as theoretical biology, 7th meeting of the International Society for Simulation of Adaptive Behaviour (SAB), (Editors: Prescott, T.; Webb, B.), 2002 (poster)

PDF [BibTex]