Shape from shading: estimation of reflectance map

The reflectance map used by the visual system for perception of shape from shading was estimated. In Experiment 1, an image of a cylinder or a sphere illuminated from the viewer's direction was presented, and subjects estimated the cross-section of perceived 3D-shape. The reflectance map was estimated from the relationship between the stimulus image intensities and the slants of the measured cross-section. The estimated reflectance maps were not the ones based on Lambertian reflectance properties. In Experiment 2, whether perceived shapes could be predicted based on the reflectance maps obtained in Experiment 1 was examined. Subjects performed the same shape estimation task with images of cylinders generated by the reflectance map obtained in Experiment 1. The perceived shapes coincided well with the shapes used for stimulus image generation. These results indicate that the visual system's estimation of shape from shading can be fully understood based on empirically obtained reflectance maps without mentioning its inaccurate nature which has been claimed by past studies.