SELF-SIMILARITY PROPERTIES OF NATURAL IMAGES RESEMBLE THOSE OF TURBULENT FLOWS

We show that the statistics of an edge type variable in natural images exhibits self-similarity properties which resemble those of local ene rgy dissipation in turbulent flows. Our results show that selfsimilari ty and extended self-similarity hold remarkably for the statistics of the local edge variance, and that the very same models can be used to predict all of the associated exponents. These results suggest using n atural images as a laboratory for testing more elaborate scaling model s of interest for tile statistical description of turbulent flows. The properties we have exhibited are relevant for the modeling of the ear ly visual system: They should be included in models designed for the p rediction of receptive fields. [S0031-9007(97)05190-9].