We define a visual pattern as an image feature with frequency components in a range of
bands that are aligned in phase. A technique to partition an image into its visual patterns
involves clustering of the band-pass filtered versions of the image according to a measure of
congruence in phase or, equivalently, alignment in the filter's responses energy maxima. In
this paper we study some measures of dissimilarity between images and discuss their
suitability to the specific task of misalignment estimation between energy maps.