So the complication,

in that explanation of Stereopsis,

comes from studies not, not exclusively,
but comes largely from studies
of Random Dot Stereograms, and
what's called the Correspondence Problem.
A problem that's made [COUGH] especially
evident in, Random Dot Stereograms.
You've probably seen Random dot
stereograms and somewhat different but
popular, dot stereograms that,
I don't see them too much these days, but
not too many years ago you'd
find them in the Sunday paper.
Because they're using find the
stereoscopic object in an autostereogram.
Random dot stereograms were discovered
in the early 1950s and they
were discovered not, not by Bela Julesz,
the person I'm going to talk about here.
But, by another vision
scientist named Ashen Bredder,
and the reason they were discovered really
had to do with military applications.
But, Random dot stereograms,
which I'll explain to you in a second
aid in the breaking of camouflage and
that obviously has.
Military interests.
The contribution of Julesz,
who was a very interesting guy.
Was to figure out how to make these
Random dot stereograms digitally,
on computer technology that was just
coming into general application.
In the late 1950s,
when he began this work.
But Julesz was trained in Hungary.
He got his PhD there, and he emigrated
to the United States in 1956, at
a time when Hungary was, you may recall,
under very enormous political upheaval,
and He was a young man then and,
and got his first job at Belabs.
You remember we talked about the Bel
laboratories before in the context of
information through Shannon and
enormous contributions of Belabs made to
many aspects of science and
visual science through the years.
And as I said, what Julesz did
was to figure out how to make
Random dot stereograms
easily on a computer.
So what's a Random dot stereogram?
So this is the left eye view.
And the right eye view.
And if you fuse these two images.
And many of you will be able to do this
by what's called free fusion, just by

looking through the plane of the computer

screen, or looking in front of it,
to put these two things together in
your perceptual minds eye so to speak.
And you'll be able to see that,
an object in depth pops out of that.
So, what a stereogram is, is basically
completely camouflaging any object that's
in the scene, save an object that is,
different in the right and the left eye
view, by virtue of some random dots,
that don't represent an object unless
you fuse these images stereoscopically.
So, the great contribution
of Random dot stereograms.
Basically to get rid of the idea of
seeing objects in stereo depth and
demonstrate that you can see them
in perfectly camouflaged scenes if you
simply shift a set of Random dots.
So the way of setting this
up is indicated in these.
Upper diagrams you select
in this eye view, just to
same Random dots that you're going to
shift in the view of your other eye,
you've shifted by tiny amounts,
some background dots are covered.
You fill in the gap that's left on this
side with some more Random dots, and,
you've generated.
An image that's perfectly camouflaged
in the sense that if you go to
that if you had a steroscophany there's no
image there, you can't see you can't see
the shift in dots unless you fuse
the images and bring stereopsis to bare.
And when you do that as I
said you see an object.
A square that's either in front or
in back of the plane of the rest of
the random dots depending on whether
your fusion is crossed or uncrossed.
There are a variety of ways of doing this.
If you don't know how to do this,
in free fusion, you can.
Use a piece of cardboard to help you out
and put it between the two eyes, and
look down on these and that's helpful.
If that doesn't for you, you can buy for
a few dollars a little stereoscopic viewer
on the internet and
look at any stereoscopic image.
That way, which is fun to do, I mean,
the reason that the autostereograms and
stereograms are popular is that
it's really fun to look at them.
And, of course, as I've said before,
this is the technology, so
to speak, not much of a technology

that lies behind the.

Viewmaster stereoscope that Wheatstone
invented and that you can now buy.
So that's great.
Where the problem comes in, and where
Random dot stereograms have had an impact
is making abundantly clear.
The so called correspondence problem.
And this is in a sense the manifestation
of the Inverse Problem, in, in stereopsis.
So, let's go back to the proceeding slide.
Imagine the difficulty in principle.
The brain actually accomplishing
what's going on here.
Because in some sense,
one has to match one's brain.
One's visual brain has
to match Random dots
in the left eye view
with the right eye view.
And how is that possible?
I mean, that seems [COUGH]
either computationally or
conceptually, just common sensically.
The possible task, and
everyone who's played with Random dot
stereograms is well aware of that.
And the name the correspondence problem,
has been attached to this
conception of difficulty of,
how can you find the dot in the left eye
that corresponds with the image dot.
The right eye to put together these
images and see stereoscopically.
So as I said, that's a manifestation
of the inherent ambiguity in stereopsis
that we've talked about in the context of.
Basically, all the other
aspects of vision,
that we've discussed in this series, and
just to remind you this is the image that
I've shown you a couple of times now.
Where the same image on the retina, is
generated by objects of different sizes,
different distances.
And that conflation.
Of [COUGH] information in the physical
world conflation at the level
of the retinal projection is
abundantly clear and dramatically clear
in the case of Random dot stereograms for
the ambiguity that's diagrammed here is.
It seems overwhelming how, how to think
about how the visual brain could.
Overcome that problem, match Random dot
patterns in the left, and the right eye.
So, this raises the question, and a lot
of people are thinking about this, today.
Could there be a way around
the correspondence problem, and

a simpler explanation of stereopsis?

That is to say the correspondence
problem really seems an obstacle that so
far hasn't been surmounted in the sense
that nobody's really explained how that,
problem could be solved.
There are a lot of theories that
involve complicated computations of,
of phase information, energy information,
in the retinal image.
And well, maybe that's what
the visual brain i, is doing.
But it seems an uphill battle to
think of the visual brain doing that.
And one wants to think,
or one's really impelled to think about,
could there be another way.
And the answer is, one really doesn't
know but at least I'll want to.
I present to you, another possibility
that's well worth thinking about.
So in this image,
what's being compared are correspondence.
So this is the world out here.
And in this world,
here is the horopter that we talked about.
And here's a, a little object in the world
that's indicated as this brown square,
and if you look along to the left,
right, left, and the right retina,
the, these are the corresponding images
of the brown object in, in space.
And as I pointed out to you before,
the position on the retina of
the round projection from this object
of the left eye view is, of course,
in a different position, given that this
object is further than the viropter.
In the left eye view or the right eye
view, they occupy different positions, and
that's where the correspondence
problem comes from.
How do you match,
those corresponding regions?
Well, there's another aspect
of a projection of images, and
that's shown in this kind of light tan.
Overlay here, this has to do with
corresponding receptive fields.
So, corresponding receptive fields depend
on retinotopy on the anatomical layout,
retinotopically in the left eye and
the right eye.
And, if you consider projections
around the corresponding.
Receptive fields,
then that's built into the system.
There's no correspondence problem in the
sense that anatomy has built in, the match
in the left eye and right eye

receptive fields at a given point

in retinal on the on the space
of the retinal a surface.
So, one thing that people
are considering these days.
Is does that present another way
of thinking about stereopsis.
That would depend on
the relative activity,
of the anatomically corresponding Left
eye and right eye receptive fields.
A way of getting around
the correspondence problem and,
and, this is simply where
this field is at today.
It's not clear that that's, going to work.
But, it is clear that the correspondence
problem, is really a fundamental obstacle
in thinking about, the mechanism,
the physical way or the.
The logical way that stereopsis
is generated in the visual brain.