<title>Mapping luminance into brightness: an object-oriented approach</title>

Abstract

An object-oriented model for the brightness perception of static images is presented. The philosophy behind the model is that the visual system aims at, a representation of brightness that displays object properties and is consequently insensitive to variations in light source and viewing conditions. The model assumes an ensemble of neural units that differ in receptive field size, that is, identical operations are performed at a number of spatial scales. The operating characteristics reflect the behaviour of typical cells in the visual pathway, such as ganglion cells, and are robust against variations in light level. The brightness at each retinal position is the weighted sum of neural activities that exist at this position in the different scales. The weighting function is such that the brightness impression is robust against variation in viewing distance. In this paper it is shown that the model is able to unify different aspects of brightness perception such as brightness induction, brightness assimilation and the perception of different brightness illusions.© (1990) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.