This paper analyzes the behavior of the MAC layer in applications using stencil skeletons in Visual Sensor Networks (VSN) applications. Specifically, we analyze the communication pattern required by a specific skeleton (INS) and simulate its behavior using a selection current MAC layers available on VSN. We analyze both the energy required by different MACs and their ability to reach low latencies needed for real-time applications. The results show that, using energy efficient protocols like T-MAC, it is possible to reach a good tradeoff between performance and energy. To reach this result, however, T-MAC parameters (frame size, contention time and timeout) need to be carefully tuned exploiting the characteristics of the pattern.I.