A Statistical Story of Visual Illusions

This paper explores the wholly empirical paradigm of visual illusions, which was introduced two decades ago in Neuro-Science. This data-driven approach attempts to explain visual illusions by the likelihood of patches in real-world images. Neither the data, nor the tools, existed at the time to extensively support this paradigm. In the era of big data and deep learning, at last, it becomes possible. This paper introduces a tool that computes the likelihood of patches, given a large dataset to learn from. Given this tool, we present an approach that manages to support the paradigm and explain visual illusions in a unified manner. Furthermore, we show how to generate (or enhance) visual illusions in natural images, by applying the same principles (and tool) reversely.