In image processing, a Gabor filter, named after Dennis Gabor, who first proposed it as a 1D filter. The Gabor filter was first generalized to 2D by Gösta Granlund, by adding a reference direction. The Gabor filter is a linear filter used for texture analysis, which essentially means that it analyzes whether there is any specific frequency content in the image in specific directions in a localized region around the point or region of analysis. Frequency and orientation representations of Gabor filters are claimed by many contemporary vision scientists to be similar to those of the human visual system. They have been found to be particularly appropriate for texture representation and discrimination. In the spatial domain, a 2D Gabor filter is a Gaussian kernel function modulated by a sinusoidal plane wave.