A number of studies have attempted to extract significant edges by including regional support for an edge (Canny,
1986; Elder,
1999; Leclerc & Zucker,
1987; Martin, Fowlkes, & Malik,
2004; Shashua & Ullman,
1990; Zhou & Mel,
2008). One goal of such studies is to develop algorithms that perform figure/ground assignment (Fowlkes et al.,
2007; Heitger, von der Heydt, & Kubler,
1994; Hoiem et al.,
2011; Vecera, Vogel, & Woodman,
2002). These studies have created techniques which take advantage of the smooth structure of natural edges to integrate the contours using long-range information (see, e.g., Elder,
1999; Geisler, Perry, Super, & Gallogly,
2001; Li & Gilbert,
2002). It has been argued that the human visual system performs a form of contour integration similar to these algorithms (see, e.g., Field, Hayes, & Hess,
1993; Geisler et al.,
2001). However, these studies have not explored the statistics of different edge types, which may prove useful both for locating significant edges and for combining these edges into veridical contours and figures.