Perception is the analysis of sensory input in the context of our prior perceptual experience of the world. The goal of such analysis in visual perception is to infer the identities, forms, and spatial arrangement of objects in the three-dimensional (3-D) scene based on our two-dimensional (2-D) retinal images. Computational approaches to perception seek to elucidate the theoretical principles and to model the mechanisms underlying these analyses and inferential processes.

The theoretician David Marr suggested that computational accounts of perception should provide explanations at three different levels: (1) computational theory, (2) representation and algorithms, and (3) implementation. Accounts at the computational theory level clarify the purposes or goals of the computations underlying a perceptual phenomenon and explain the logic of the proposed strategies for achieving those ...