The SaliencyToolbox is a collection of Matlab functions and scripts for computing the saliency map for an image, for determining the extent of a proto-object, and for serially scanning the image with the focus of attention. It has been cited in more than 1500 papers.
The code was originally developed as part of Dirk B. Walther's PhD thesis in the Koch Lab at the California Institute of Technology, made possible by funding from NSF and NIMH.
System requirement: Matlab and Matlab Image Processing Toolbox.
If you use the SaliencyToolbox for your work, then please cite this paper:
Dirk Walther and Christof Koch (2006), Modeling attention to salient proto-objects. Neural Networks 19, 1395-1407. PDF
For a list of papers that use SaliencyToolbox (that cite the above paper), click here.
Dirk B. Walther and Christof Koch (2007), Attention in Hierarchical Models of Object Recognition. in Paul Cisek, Trevor Drew, and John F. Kalaska (eds.), Computational Neuroscience: Theoretical insights into brain function, Progress in Brain Research, 165, 57-78. PDF
Dirk Walther, Interactions of visual attention and object recognition: computational modeling, algorithms, and psychophysics. PhD thesis, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, 23th February 2006. PDF
Dirk Walther, Ueli Rutishauser, Christof Koch, and Pietro Perona (2005), Selective visual attention enables learning. Computer Vision and Image Understanding, 100, 41-63. PDF
Ueli Rutishauser, Dirk Walther, Christof Koch, and Pietro Perona (2004), Is bottom-up attention useful for object recognition? IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 2, 37-44. PDF
Christof Koch and Shimon Ullman (1985), Shifts in Selective Visual-Attention-Towards the Underlying Neural Circuitry. Human Neurobiology 4: p. 219-227.
Laurent Itti, Christof Koch, and Ernst Niebur (1998), A model of saliency-based visual attention for rapid scene analysis. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 20(11): p. 1254-1259.
Laurent Itti and Christof Koch (2000), A saliency-based search mechanism for overt and covert shifts of visual attention. Vision Research, 40(10-12): p. 1489-1506.
email: walther@saliencytoolbox.net
web: bwlab.org
Twitter: @DirkBWalther