  Object selection refers to the mechanism of extracting objects of interest
while ignoring other objects and background in a given visual scene. It is a
fundamental issue for many computer vision and image analysis techniques and it
is still a challenging task to artificial visual systems. Chaotic phase
synchronization takes place in cases involving almost identical dynamical
systems and it means that the phase difference between the systems is kept
bounded over the time, while their amplitudes remain chaotic and may be
uncorrelated. Instead of complete synchronization, phase synchronization is
believed to be a mechanism for neural integration in brain. In this paper, an
object selection model is proposed. Oscillators in the network representing the
salient object in a given scene are phase synchronized, while no phase
synchronization occurs for background objects. In this way, the salient object
can be extracted. In this model, a shift mechanism is also introduced to change
attention from one object to another. Computer simulations show that the model
produces some results similar to those observed in natural vision systems.
