title: Statistical thermodynamics of natural images.
abstract: The scale invariance of natural images suggests an analogy to the statistical mechanics of physical systems at a critical point. Here we examine the distribution of pixels in small image patches and show how to construct the corresponding thermodynamics. We find evidence for criticality in a diverging specific heat, which corresponds to large fluctuations in how "surprising" we find individual images, and in the quantitative form of the entropy vs energy. We identify special image configurations as local energy minima and show that average patches within each basin are interpretable as lines and edges in all orientations.
authors: Joseph Henry Laboratories of Physics and Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA.
authors: Greg J
authors: GJ
authors: Stephens
authors: Thierry
authors: T
authors: Mora
authors: Gašper
authors: G
authors: Tkačik
authors: William
authors: W
authors: Bialek
mesh_terms: D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D015233:Models, Statistical; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009010:Monte Carlo Method; D013816:Thermodynamics