The area of novelty filtering (detecting changes in a pattern) is of importance to investigators working with optical and electronic neural systems for at least two reasons. Firstly, for transmission of information, much less capacity is required when only changes in spatial or temporal pattern are used (unless the pattern or scene changes totally and abruptly). Secondly, in pattern recognition, detecting changes or motion is of obvious importance. The purpose of the research is the development of optical neural systems which have the potential of sensing changes in a three-dimensional scene.
