Coordinates:
Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
43 Vassar St., Building 46-4115
Cambridge, MA 02139.
Phone: (617) 253-0645
email: a d e l s o n @ c s a i l . m i t . e d u
Web: http://mit.edu/persci/people/adelson
Secondary Office:
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)
32 Vassar St., Building 32-D424
Cambridge, MA 02139.
Education:
1974-1979. Ph. D. in Experimental Psychology, University of Michigan.
Dissertation: The response of the rod system to bright flashes of light.
1970-1974. B. A. in Physics and Philosophy, Yale University.
Positions held:
2007 - Present: John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Vision Science, Dept. of Brain and Cognitive
1997 - 2007: Professor of Vision Science, Dept. of Brain and Cognitive
Sciences, MIT.
1994 - 1997: Associate Professor of Vision Science, Dept. of Brain
and Cognitive Sciences, MIT.
1987 - 1994: Associate Professor of Vision Science, Media Laboratory,
MIT.
1981 - 1986: Staff scientist (MTS), RCA Laboratories; research on basic
and applied problems in human and machine vision.
1979 - 1981: Post-doctoral fellow at NYU; research in computational
and psychophysical problems in motion perception.
Honors and Awards:
2007 - Member, National Academy of Sciences.
2005 - Longuet-Higgins Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computer
Vision that have Withstood the Test of Time, IEEE Computer Society.
1992 - Rank Prize in Opto-electronics (with J. A. Movshon, W. Newsome,
and S. Zeki).
1984 - Adolph Lomb Medal, Optical Society of America.
1983 - Outstanding Achievement Award, RCA Laboratories.
1980 - Marquis Award, University of Michigan.
Masters Theses Supervised:
Tappen, Marshall, "Recovering Shading and Reflectance from a Single Image" M.S., M.I.T., 2002.
Neviett, William, "Early Visual Features as Determinants of Perceived Texture
Similarity", M.S., M.I.T., 1995.
Niyogi, Sourabh, "Kinetic Occlusion", S.M., EECS, M.I.T., 1995.
Nagarajan, Ram, "Very Low Bit Rate Object Based Image Compression Using Nonlinear
Geometric Transforms", M.S., M.I.T., 1995.
Desai, Ujjaval, "Coding of Segmented Image Sequences", M.Eng. M.I.T.,
1994.
Chou, G. T., "Visual Motion Perception: Uncertainty, Estimation, and Control",
M.S., M.I.T., 1993.
Sinha, Pawan, "The Perception of Shading and Reflectance", M.S., M.I.T.,
1992.
Sokolov, Michael, "Visual Motion: Algorithms for Analysis and Application",
M.A., M.I.T., 1990.
Simoncelli, Eero, "Orthogonal Sub-band Image Transforms", M.S., M.I.T.,
1988.
Doctoral Theses Supervised:
McDermott, Joshua H., "Empirical Constraints on the Evolutionary Origins of Music",
M. I. T., 2007.
Tappen, Marshall F., "Learning Continuous Models for Estimating Intrinsic Component Images",
M. I. T., 2006.
Fleming, Roland W., "Human Visual Perception Under Real-world Illumination",
M. I. T., 2003.
Dror, Ron, "Surface Reflectance Recognition and Real-World Illumination Statistics", M. I. T., 2002.
Weiss, Yair, "Bayesian motion estimation and segmentation", M.I.T.,
1998.
Wang, John Y. A., "Layered Image Representation: Identification of Coherent
Components in Image Sequences", M.I.T., 1996.
Simoncelli, Eero, "Distributed Analysis and Representation of Visual Motion",
M.I.T., 1993.
Freeman, William, "Steerable Filters and Local Analysis of Image Structure,"
M.I.T., 1992.
Publications:
Image Statistics for Surface Reflectance Perception
Lavanya Sharan, Yuanzhen Li, Isamu Motoyoshi, Shin'ya Nishida, and Edward H. Adelson JOSA A, Vol. 25, Issue 4, pp. 846-865 (2008)
Image Statistics and Surface Perception
Edward H. Adelson.
Human Vision and Electronic Imaging XIII, Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 6806, pp. 680602-680602-9 (2008)
Image Mapping Using Local and Global Statistics
Yuanzhen Li and Edward H. Adelson.
Human Vision and Electronic Imaging XIII. Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 6806, pp.
680614-680614-11 (2008)
Image Statistics and the Perception of Surface Qualities
Isamu Motoyoshi, Shin'ya Nishida, Lavanya Sharan, and Edward H. Adelson.
Nature, 447:206-209, (10 May 2007)
Apparent Ridges for Line Drawing
Tilke Judd, Frédo Durand, and Edward H. Adelson. ACM Transactions on Graphics (SIGGRAPH Proceedings), 26(3):19, (July 2007)
Analysis of Contour Motions
Ce Liu, William T. Freeman and Edward H. Adelson. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS 2006)
Estimating Intrinsic Component Images using Non-Linear Regression
Marshall F. Tappen, Edward H. Adelson, William T. Freeman. IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), v. 2, pp. 1992-1999, (2006)
Recovering Intrinsic Images from a Single Image
Marshall F. Tappen, William T. Freeman, and Edward H. Adelson. IEEE Transactions on
Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 27(9): 1459 - 1472, (2005)
Luminance Re-mapping for the Control of Apparent Material
Isamu Motoyoshi, Shin'ya Nishida, and Edward H. Adelson,
ACM Proceedings of the 2nd Symposium on Appied Perception in Graphics and
Visualization, v. 95, p. 165 (2005)
Straightness as a Cue for Luminance Edge Classification
Logvinenko A. D., Adelson E. H., Ross D. A., & Somers D.
Perception & Psychophysics 67(1): 120-128, (2005)
Motion Magnification
Liu, C., Torralba, A. B., Freeman, W. T., Durand, F., Adelson, E. H.,
ACM Transactions on Graphics (Siggraph Proceedings), 24(3): 519-526 (2005)
Compressing and Companding High Dynamic Range Images with Subband Architectures
Li, Y., Sharan, L., and Adelson, E. H., ACM Transactions on Graphics (Siggraph Proceedings), 24(3):
836-844 (2005)
The Geometry of the Occluding Contour and its Effect on Motion interpretation
McDermott, J., & Adelson, E. H., Journal of Vision, 4(10): 944-954,
(2004)
Statistical Characterization of Real-world Illumination
Dror, R. O., Willsky, A. S., & Adelson, E. H., Journal of Vision,
4(9): 821-837, (2004)
Specular Reflections and the Perception of Shape
Fleming, R. W., Torralba, A., & Adelson, E. H., Journal of Vision,
4(9): 798-820, (2004)
Junctions and Cost Functions in Motion Interpretation
McDermott, J., & Adelson, E. H., Journal of Vision, 4(7): 552-563,
(2004)
Real-world Illumination and the Perception of Surface Reflectance properties
Fleming,R. W., Dror, R. O., & Adelson, E. H., Journal of Vision,
3(5): 347-368 (2003)
Recovering Intrinsic Images from a Single Image
Tappen, M. F., Freeman, W. T., and Adelson, E. H., Advances in Neural
Information Processing 15, (NIPS Proceedings), MIT Press (2002)
Motion Illusions as Optimal Percepts
Weiss, Y., Simoncelli, E. P., and Adelson, E. H., Nature Neuroscience,
5(6): 598-604, (2002)
Synchrony Does Not Promote Grouping in Temporally Structured Displays
Farid, H., and Adelson, E. H. Nature Neuroscience, 4(9):875-876,
(2001)
Estimating Surface Reflectance Properties from Images under Unknown Illumination
Dror, R. O., Adelson, E. H., and Willsky, A. S. Proceedings of the SPIE
4299: Human Vision and Electronic Imaging IV, San Jose, California, (2001).
Surface Reflectance Estimation and Natural Illumination Statistics
Dror, R. O., Adelson, E. H., and Willsky, A. S. Proceedings of the Second
International Workshop on Statistical and Computational Theories of Vision,
Colocated with International Conference on Computer Vision, Vancouver (2001)
Recognition of Surface Reflectance Properties from a Single Image under Unknown
Real-World Illumination
Dror, R. O., Adelson, E. H., and Willsky, A. S. Proceedings of the IEEE
Workshop on Identifying Objects Across Variations in Lighting, Colocated with
CVPR 2001. Kauai, Hawaii, (2001)
On Seeing Stuff: The Perception of Materials by Humans and Machines
Adelson, E. H. Proceedings of the. SPIE Vol. 4299, pp. 1-12, Human Vision
and Electronic Imaging VI, Bernice E. Rogowitz; Thrasyvoulos N. Pappas; Eds.
(2001)
Statistics of Real-World Illumination
Dror, R. O., Leung, T. K., Adelson, E. H., and Willsky, A. S. Proceedings
of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Kauai,
Hawaii, December (2001)
Beyond junctions: Nonlocal form constraints on motion interpretation,
McDermott, J., Weiss, Y., and Adelson, E.H, Perception, 30: 905-923
. (2001).
Adventures with Gelatinous Ellipses: Constraints on Models of Human Motion
Analysis,
Weiss, Y., and Adelson, E. H., Perception, 29: 543-566 (2000)
Filtering Reveals Form in Temporally Structured Displays (Technical Comment),
E.H. Adelson and H. Farid, Science, 286:2231 (1999)
Separating Reflections from Images by Use of Independent Components Analysis,
H. Farid and E.H. Adelson, Journal of the Optical Society of America
A, 16(9):2136-2145, (1999)
Separating Reflections and Lighting Using Independent Components Analysis,
H. Farid and E.H. Adelson, Proceedings of IEEE Computer Society Conference
on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, pp. 262-267, Fort Collins CO.(1999)
Lightness Perception and Lightness Illusions
Adelson, E.H., in M. Gazzaniga, M.S., ed., The New Cognitive Neurosciences,
2nd Ed.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 339-351 (2000).
Slow and Smooth: A Bayesian Theory for the Combination of Motion Signals in
Human Vision
Weiss, Y., and Adelson, E. H. MIT AI Memo 1624 (1998)
Noise Removal via Bayesian Wavelet Coring
Simoncelli, E. P., and Adelson, E. H. Third IEEE International Conference
on Image Processing. Lausanne, Switzerland; September (1996).
The Perception of Shading and Reflectance
Adelson, E. H., and Pentland, A. P. In D. Knill and W. Richards (eds.), Perception as Bayesian Inference (pp. 409-423),New York: Cambridge University
Press (1996).
A Unified Mixture Framework for Motion Segmentation: Incorporating Spatial
Coherence and Estimating the Number of Models
Weiss Y., and Adelson E.H., Proceedings of IEEE conference on Computer
Vision and Pattern Recognition, pp. 321-326, (1996).
Layered Representation for Vision and Video
Adelson, E. H., Proceedings of IEEE Workshop on Representation of Visual
Scenes, Cambridge, MA; June (1995).
Motion Estimation and Segmentation with a Recurrent Mixture-of-Experts Architecture
Weiss Y., and Adelson E. H., In F. Girosi, et al. (eds.), Neural Nets
for Signal Processing V (pp. 293-303) (1995).
Analyzing and Recognizing Walking Figures in XYT
Niyogi, S. A., and Adelson, E. H., Proceedings of Computer Vision and
Pattern Recognition Seattle, WA; June (1994).
Analyzing Gait with Spatiotemporal Surfaces
Niyogi, S. A., and Adelson, E. H., Workshop on Non-Rigid Motion and
Articulated Objects, Austin, TX; November (1994).
Applying Mid-Level Vision Techniques for Video Data Compression and Manipulation
Wang, J. Y. A., Adelson, E. H., and Desai, U., Proceedings of SPIE on
Digital Video Compression on Personal Computers: Algorithms and Technologies,
2187:116-127 San Jose; February (1994).
Mid-Level Vision: New Directions in Vision and Video
Adelson, E. H., Wang, J. Y. A., and Niyogi, S. A., Proceedings of the
International Conference on Image Processing, Austin, TX; November (1994).
Perceptually Organized EM: A Framework for Motion Segmentation that Combines
Information about Form and Motion.
Weiss, Y., and Adelson, E. H., MIT Media Lab Perceptual Computing Section
TR #315 (1994).
Representing Moving Images with Layers
Wang, J. Y. A., and Adelson, E. H., IEEE Transactions on Image Processing,
3(5):625-638, (1994).
Spatio-Temoral Segmentation of Video Data
Wang, J. Y. A., and Adelson, E. H., Proceedings of SPIE on Image and
Video Processing II, 2182:120-131, San Jose; February (1994).
Transparent Motion Perception as Detection of Unbalanced Motion Signals I:
Psychophysics
Qian, N., Anderson, R. C. , and Adelson, E. H., Journal of Neuroscience,
14:7357-7366 (1994).
Transparent Motion Perception as Detection of Unbalanced Motion Signals III:
Modeling
Qian, N., Anderson, R. C., and Adelson, E. H., Journal of Neuroscience,
14:7381-7392 (1994).
Layered Representation for Image Sequence Coding
Wang, J. Y. A., and Adelson, E. H., Proceedings of ICASSP (pp. 221-224),
Minneapolis, MN; April (1993).
Layered Representation for Motion Analysis
Wang, J. Y. A., and Adelson, E. H., Proceedings of the IEEE Computer
Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (pp. 361-366),
New York; June (1993).,
Perceptual Organization and the Judgment of Brightness
Adelson, E. H., Science, 262:2042-2044 (1993).
Recovering Reflectance in a World of Painted Polyhedra
Sinha, P., and Adelson, E. H., Proceedings of Fourth International Conference
on Computer Vision (pp.156-163), Berlin; May 11-14 (1993).
Verifying the Consistency of Shading Patterns and 3-D Structures
Sinha, P., and Adelson, E. H., Proceedings of the IEEE Workshop on Qualitative
Vision (pp. 71-81), New York, NY; June 14 (1993).
Directionally Selective Complex Cells and the Computation of Motion Energy
in Cat Visual Cortex
Emerson, R. C., Bergen, J. R., and Adelson, E. H., Vision Research,
32:203-218 (1992).
Shiftable Multiscale Transforms
Simoncelli, E. P., Freeman, W. T., Adelson, E. H., and Heeger, D. J., IEEE
Transactions on Information Theory, 38:587-607 (1992).
Single Lens Stereo with a Plenoptic Camera
Adelson, E. H., and Wang J. Y. A., IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis
and Machine Intelligence, 14(2): 99-106 (1992).
Vision with Equiluminant Colour Contrast
Cavanagh, P., Adelson, E. H., and Heard, P., Perception, 21:219-226
(1992).
Computing Optical Flow Distributions Using Spatio-Temporal Filters
Simoncelli, E. P., and Adelson, E. H., MIT Media Laboratory Vision and
Modeling Technical Report #165 (1991)
The Design and Use of Steerable Filters
Freeman, W. H., and Adelson, E. H., IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis
and Machine Intelligence, 13:891-906 (1991).
Layered Representations for Image Coding
Adelson, E. H., MIT Media Laboratory Vision and Modeling Technical Report
#181 (1991)
Mechanisms for Motion Perception
Adelson, E. H., Optics and Photonics News, 2(8):24-30 (1991).
Motion Without Movement
Freeman, W. T., Adelson, E. H., and Heeger, D. J., ACM Computer Graphics
(SIGGRAPH), 25(4):27-30 (1991).
The Plenoptic Function and the Elements of Early Vision
Adelson, E. H., and Bergen, J. R.,In M. Landy and J. A. Movshon (eds), Computational Models of Visual Processing, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (1991).
Probability Distributions of Optical Flow
Simoncelli, E. P., Adelson, E. H., and Heeger, D. J., IEEE Conference
on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Mauii, Hawaii; June (1991).
Pyramids and Multiscale Representations
Adelson, E. H., Simoncelli, E. P., and Freeman, W. T.,In A. Gorea (ed.), Representations of Vision (pp. 3-16), Cambridge University Press (1991).
A Stereoscopic Camera Employing a Single Main Lens
Adelson, E. H., and Wang, J. Y A., Proceedings of Computer Vision and
Pattern Recognition (pp. 619-624), Hawaii (1991).
Subband Transforms
Simoncelli, E., and Adelson, E. H.,In J. Woods (ed.), Subband Image
Coding (pp. 143-192), Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers (1991).
Non-separable Extensions of Quadrature Mirror Filters to Multiple Dimensions
Simoncelli, E. P., and Adelson, E. H., Proceedings of IEEE, 78:652-664
(1990).
Ordinal Characteristics of Transparency
Adelson, E. H., and Anandan, P., AAAI Workshop on Qualitative Vision
(pp. 77-81), Boston, MA (1990).
The Perceptual Buildup of Three-Dimensional Structure from Motion
Hildreth, E., Grzywacz, N., Adelson, E. H., and Inada, V., Perception
and Psychopysics, 48:19-36 (1990).
Steerable Filters for Early Vision, Image Analysis, and Wavelet Decomposition
Freeman, W. T., and Adelson, E. H., Proceedings of International Conference
on Computer Vision (pp. 406-415)
Osaka, Japan (1990).
Subband Image Coding with Hexagonal Quadrature Mirror Filters
Simoncelli, E. P., and Adelson, E. H., Proceedings of Picture Coding
Symposium (pp. 10.7-1-10.7-5)
Cambridge, MA (1990).
Subband Image Coding with Three-tap Pyramids
Adelson, E. H., and Simoncelli, E. P., Proceedings of Picture Coding
Symposium (pp. 3.9-1-3.9-3)
Cambridge, MA (1990).
Hexagonal QMF Pyramids
Adelson, E. H., and Simoncelli, E. P., Proceedings of the Optical Society
of America Topical Meeting on Applied Vision (pp. 5-8), San Fransisco, CA;
July (1989).
Non-separable QMF Pyramids in Two and Three Dimensions
Simoncelli, E. P., and Adelson, E. H., SPIE Proceedings on Visual Communications
and Image Processing, Philadelpia, PA; November (1989).
Steerable Filters
Freeman, W. T., and Adelson, E. H., Image Understanding and Machine
Vision Digest, 14, Optical Society of America (pp. 114-117), Cape Cod, MA
(1989).
Early Vision and Texture Perception
Bergen, J. R., and Adelson, E. H., Nature, 333:363-364 (1988).
The Temporal Integration of 3-D Structure from Motion: A Computational and
Psychophysical Study
Grzywacz, N. M., Hildreth, E. C., Inada, V. K., and Adelson, E. H.,In W.
von Seelen, G. Shaw, and U. M. Leinhos (eds.), Organization of Neural Networks,
New York: VCR Velagsgellschaft (1988).
Orthogonal Pyramid Transforms for Image Coding
Adelson, E. H., Simoncelli, E., and Hingorani, R., Visual Communications
and Image Processing II, Proc. SPIE, Vol. 845, pp. 50-58 Cambridge, MA; October
27-29 (1987).
The Extraction of Spatio-Temporal Energy in Human and Machine Vision
Adelson, E. H., and Bergen, J. R., Proceedings of Workshop on Motion:
Representation and Analysis (pp. 151-155), Charleston, SC; May 7-9 (1986).
The Analysis of Moving Visual Patterns
Movshon, J. A., Adelson, E. H., Gizzi, M. S., and Newsome, W. T., Experimental
Brain Research, 11:117-152 (1986). also in:,C. Chagas, R. Gattass,
and C. Gross (eds.), Pontificae Academiae Scientarum Scripta Vara 54 (pp.
117-151). Rome: Vatican Press (1985).
Merging Images Through Pattern Decomposition
Burt, P. J., and Adelson, E. H., Proceedings of SPIE (pp. 18-23),
San Diego, CA (1986).
Subband Coring for Image Noise Reduction
Adelson, E. H., Internal Report: RCA Sarnoff Labortories, Princeton,
NJ (1986).
Pyramid-Based Computer Graphics
Ogden, J. M., Adelson, E. H., Bergen, J. R., and Burt, P. J., RCA Engineer,
30(5):4-15 (1985).
Spatiotemporal Energy Models for the Perception of Motion
Adelson, E. H., and Bergen, J. R., Journal Optical Society of America
A, 2(2):284-299 (1985).
Pyramid Methods in Image Processing
Adelson, E. H., Anderson, C. H., Bergen, J. R., Burt, P. J., and Ogden,
J. M., RCA Engineer, 29(6):33-41 (1984).
What Is Iconic Storage Good For?
Adelson, E. H., Brain Sciences, 6:11-12 (1983).
The Laplacian Pyramid as a Compact Image Code
Burt, P., and Adelson, E. H., IEEE Transactions on Communication,
COM-31:532-540 (1983).
A Multiresolution Spline with Application to Image Mosaics
Burt, P., and Adelson, E. H., ACM Transactions on Graphics, 2(4):217-236
(1983).
Multi-resolution Splining Using a Pyramid Image Representation
Adelson, E. H., and Burt, P. J., SPIE Applications of Digital Image
Processing IV, pp. 204-210, (1983).
The Perception of Coherent Motion in Two-Dimensional Patterns
Adelson, E. H., and Movshon, J. A., ACM Siggraph and Sigart Interdisciplinary
Workshop on Motion: Representation and Perception (pp. 11-16), Toronto; April
4-6 (1983).
Looking at the World Through a Rose-Colored Ganzfeld
Adelson, E. H., Vision Research, 21:749-750 (1982).
Modeling the Human Visual System
Adelson, E. H., Carlson, C. R., and Pica, A. P., RCA Engineer, 27:56-64
(1982).
Phenomenal Coherence of Moving Visual Patterns
Adelson, E. H., and Movshon, J. A., Nature, 300:523-525 (1982).
Saturation and Adaptation in the Rod System
Adelson, E. H., Vision Research, 22:1299-1312 (1982).
The Delayed Rod Afterimage
Adelson, E. H., Vision Research, 22:1313-1328 (1982).
Image Data Compression with the Laplacian Pyramid
Adelson, E. H., and Burt, P. J., Proceeding of the Conference on Pattern
Recognition and Image Processing, Dallas, TX, pp. 218-223. Los Angeles, CA:
IEEE Computer Society Press (1981).
A Non-linear Scale for Plotting Color Matching Functions
Adelson, E. H., Journal of the Optical Society of America, 71:201-203
(1981).
The Psychophysics of Iconic Storage
Adelson, E. H., and Jonides, J., Journal of Experimental Psychology,
Human Perception and Performance, 6:486-493 (1979).
Visual Persistence Without the Rods
Adelson, E. H., Perception and Psychophysics, 26:245-246 (1979).
Iconic Storage: The Role of Rods
Adelson, E. H.,, Science, 201:544-546 (1978).
Last updated 8/8/8