Exploring a Chromatic Oblique Effect.

Abstract

For centuries, military forces have used camouflage to obscure potential targets from the enemy. Because the eye is fairly adept at picking out edges, colors, and bright areas, camouflage is often used to degrade these qualities from human detection. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the role of certain spatial, temporal, and chromatic features on the human visual system and how these features may aid the quest for better camouflage. Methods: Test patterns were spatio-temporal raised cosines of varying orientation (horizontal or vertical and oblique), spatial frequency (1, 3, and 7 cpd), and modulated at 2.0 Hz. Color contrast thresholds were determined from 16 different red-green color mixture ratios. This methodology eliminates the problems with luminance artifacts and the need to determine exact equiluminance. Results: The data formed an ellipse with the half-length measuring color ldiscrimination and the half-width measuring brightness discrimination. A maximum likelihood method was used to fit the data. Three of the four subjects showed a 3 cpd chromatic oblique effect, while the 1 and 7 cpd achromatic and chromatic oblique effect was inconsistent across subjects. Conclusions: While real-world objects are more complex than laboratory stimuli, knowledge of spatial and chromatic qualities that inhibit detection will aid the quest for better camouflage.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 1997
Accession Number
ADA334009

Entities

People

  • Paul G. Curran

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Armored Personnel Carriers
  • Color Vision
  • Contrast
  • Detection
  • Detectors
  • Frequency
  • Information Processing
  • Medical Personnel
  • New York
  • Optics
  • Orientation (Direction)
  • Perception
  • Psychology
  • Sine Waves
  • United States Naval Academy
  • Urban Areas

Readers

  • Vision Science/Vision Psychology/Cognitive Neuroscience.