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Updated: Sep 25, 2025

Microfluidic Platform with Multiplexed Electronic Detection for Spatial Tracking of Particles
Published on: March 13, 2017
Detection of targets in filtered noise: whitening in space and spatial frequency
Abstract:
Most studies of detection in complex backgrounds have measured and modeled human performance for statistically uniform (stationary) backgrounds. However, natural and medical images have statistical properties that vary over space. We measured detection of various target shapes presented in Gaussian 1/f noise backgrounds that were statistically uniform over space, and in ones that modulated in contrast over space. We find that the pattern of human thresholds is not consistent with the ideal observer but is consistent with a suboptimal observer that performs partial whitening in spatial frequency and whitening (reliability-weighting) in space, and has a small level of intrinsic position uncertainty.
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