A hierarchical cellular logic for pyramid computers

Hierarchical structure occurs in biological vision systems and there is good reason to incorporate it into a model of computation for processing binary images. A mathematical formalism is presented which can describe a wide variety of operations useful in image processing and graphics. The formalism allows for two kinds of simple transformations on the values (called pyramids) of a set of cells called a hierarchical domain: the first are binary operations on boolean values, and the second are neighborhood-matching operations. The implied model of computation is more structured than previously discussed pyramidal models, and is more readily realized in parallel hardware, while it remains sufficiently rich to provide efficient solutions to a wide variety of problems. The model has a simplicity which is due to the restricted nature of the operations and the implied synchronization across the hierarchical domain. A corresponding algebraic simplicity in the logic makes possible the concise representation of many cellular-data operations.