Scene (perception)

In the field of perception, a scene is information that can flow from a physical environment into a perceptual system via sensory transduction. (For example, see Ruderman & Bialek 1994^[1] or Geisler 2008.^[2])

A perceptual system is designed to interpret scenes.

Examples of scenes include

• Still images
• Binocular still images
• Moving images (movies)
• Binocular moving images (~3D movies)
• Sounds of a local environment (audio recordings)
• Tactile properties of a local environment.

A natural scene is a scene that a perceptual system would typically encounter in a natural mode of operation. Therefore, a very relevant area of research is natural scene statistics.^[3][4]

References

1. Ruderman, D. L., & Bialek, W. (1994). Statistics of Natural Images - Scaling in the Woods. Physical Review Letters, 73(6), 814-817.
2. Geisler, William S. (2008), Visual perception and the statistical properties of natural scenes. Annual Review of Psychology 59:167-192. PDF
3. Geisler, W. S., Perry, J. S. and Ing, A. D. (2008) Natural systems analysis. In: B. Rogowitz and T. Pappas (Eds.), Human Vision and Electronic Imaging. Proceedings SPIE, Vol 6806, 68060M
4. Field, D. J. (1987). Relations between the statistics of natural images and the response properties of cortical cells. Journal of the Optical Society of America A 4, 2379-2394.