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Color contributes to object-contour perception in natural scenes.
Thorsten Hansen1, Karl R Gegenfurtner2
1Abteilung Allgemeine Psychologie, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, Gießen, GermanyThorsten.Hansen@psychol.uni-giessen.dehttp://www.allpsych.uni-giessen.de/hansen/.
Journal of Vision
|March 30, 2017
Summary
Chromatic edge contrast significantly improves object-contour perception, even when combined with achromatic information. This study demonstrates that color vision plays a crucial role in how we perceive object outlines.
Area of Science:
- Vision Science
- Computational Neuroscience
- Color Perception
Background:
- Chromatic and achromatic edge contrast offer independent information for object perception.
- The specific contribution of chromatic contrast to object-contour perception remains unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- To quantify the benefit of chromatic edge contrast for object-contour perception.
- To investigate how well human-marked object contours can be predicted using both chromatic and achromatic edge contrast.
Main Methods:
- Utilized four datasets of human-marked object contours (824 images).
- Transformed images into the Derrington-Krauskopf-Lennie color space to isolate chromatic and achromatic information.
- Employed receiver operating-characteristic (ROC) analysis to compare edge detection with human-marked contours.
Main Results:
- Adding chromatic edges to achromatic edges improved contour prediction for 83% of images (average 3.5% ΔAUC).
- In some cases, the prediction advantage reached up to 52% ΔAUC.
- Adding achromatic edges to chromatic edges yielded a smaller average advantage (2.4% ΔAUC).
Conclusions:
- Chromatic information is important for accurate object-contour perception.
- Color contrast provides a significant, independent contribution to visual object recognition.