Contrast Discrimination by the Human Visual System
Abstract
In vision of everyday scenes, features requiring detection are frequently observed in the presence of suprathreshold background structures. Detection of such features is a contrast discrimination task and is often necessary for the subsequent process of recognition. In order to provide a description of this task, contrast discrimination measurements were determined for targets with luminance profiles which were localised in both space and spatial frequency. The investigation extends earlier work on this topic by measurement of contrast discrimination levels for different base contrasts, sizes, luminances, and aspect ratios of the targets. A model is proposed to describe the contrast discrimination process, and an example is given of a simple application of the model to the determination of the number of discriminable steps in contrast as a function of the spatial frequency of a sinusoidal grating target.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 1981
- Accession Number
- ADA104181
Entities
People
- G. J. Burton
Organizations
- United States Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center