The research presented in this paper represents several novel conceptual contributions to the computer vision literature. In this position paper, our goal is to define the scope of computer vision analysis and discuss a new categorisation of the computer vision problem. We first provide a novel decomposition of computer vision into base components which we term the axioms of vision. These are used to define researcher-level and developer-level access to vision algorithms, in a way which does not require expert knowledge of computer vision. We discuss a new line of thought for computer vision by basing analyses on descriptions of the problem instead of in terms of algorithms. From this an abstraction can be developed to provide a layer above algorithmic details. This is extended to the idea of a formal description language which may be automatically interpreted thus allowing those not familiar with computer vision techniques to utilise sophisticated methods.

Presented in St John's, May 2011 at the International Conference on Computer and Robot Vision.