The Computation of Color
Abstract
Color vision has traditionally been the domain of many sciences: physics, physiology, psychology, and philosophy. This thesis maintains that interdisciplinary tradition and looks at color vision from several points of view. It focusses on the phenomenon of color constancy and uses its formulation as a computational problem to link the different viewpoints. The primary contributions of the thesis are (1) the demonstration of a formal framework for lightness algorithms, which represent one class of solution to the problem of color constancy; (2) the derivation of a new lightness algorithm based on regularization theory; (3) the synthesis of an adaptive lightness algorithm using learning techniques; (4) the development of a segmentation algorithm that uses color information to mark material boundaries, with guidance from luminance edges; and (5) an experimental investigation into the cues that human observers use to judge the color of the illuminant, demonstrating that under certain conditions, observers ignore correct information from specular reflections in favor of incorrect information from other cues. Other computational approaches to the problem of color constancy are reviewed and some of their links to psychophysics and physiology are explored. (kr)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 1989
- Accession Number
- ADA216531
Entities
People
- Anya C. Hurlbert
Organizations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology