How does foveation affect the speed of subsequent image processing?
Foveation increases the speed of subsequent image processing. This is a simple consequence of the fact that the number of pixels in the foveation pyramid is generally a small fraction of that in the input image. In fact, because the foveation pyramid computes so quickly, it is generally faster to apply foveation encoding plus another image processing procedure than to apply the other image processing procedure alone. For example, applying foveation encoding followed by software MPEG encoding is often several times faster than applying MPEG alone. We have developed our own real-time software video coder (similar to MPEG) which runs at very usable frame rates, for moderate size images and a moderate degree of foveation.
