Overall gloss evaluation in the presence of multiple cues to surface glossiness

Human observers use the information offered by various visual cues when evaluating the glossiness of a surface. Several studies have demonstrated the effect of each single cue to glossiness, but little has been reported on how multiple cues are integrated for the perception of surface gloss. This paper reports on a psychophysical study with real stimuli that are different regarding multiple visual gloss criteria. Four samples were presented to 15 observers under different conditions of illumination in a light booth, resulting in a series of 16 stimuli. Through pairwise comparisons, an overall gloss scale was derived, from which it could be concluded that both differences in the distinctness of the reflected image and differences in luminance affect gloss perception. However, an investigation of the observers' strategy to evaluate gloss indicated a dichotomy among observers. One group of observers used the distinctness-of-image as a principal cue to glossiness, while the second group evaluated gloss primarily from differences in luminance of both the specular highlight and the diffuse background. It could therefore be questioned whether surface gloss can be characterized with one single quantity, or that a set of quantities is necessary to describe the gloss differences between objects.     

基于亮度阈值效应的无参考图像质量评价方法

目的图像质量的优劣不仅与失真有关,同时与亮度图像的质量有关,而无参考图像质量评价中未考虑到亮度图像的质量对图像整体质量评价的影响,因此引入亮度阈值效应对其亮度图像的质量进行量化评价。方法在BRISQUE算法的基础上进行改进,以快速衰落失真为例,在调整亮度后获取的50幅图像库中进行实验,将失真图像分层为入射分量和反射分量,对入射分量(亮度图像)采用亮度阈值算法,反射分量(反射图像)采用BRISQUE算法,提出一种新的无参考图像质量评价方法。结果文中算法的皮尔逊相关系数(PCC)为0.9982,斯皮尔曼秩相关系数(SROCC)为0.9741。结论由实验数据可知,文中算法在人眼视觉的主观评价上相较于BRISQUE算法有更好的一致性,符合人眼的视觉感知。     

Gloss as an aspect of the measurement of appearance

The perception and measurement of gloss is just one part of the concept of appearance measurement. We describe the comparison between data derived by 20 observers who each scaled the perceived gloss of a set of 84 neutral and colored test samples and measurements of those samples made using a glossmeter and a sphere-based spectrophotometer. With a glossmeter, the relationship between the visual-scaled data and the measured gloss values could be described by a three-part linear fit or, with a higher correlation, a cubic function. For the sphere-based spectrophotometer, the difference in the luminance factor, deltaY, between specular-included and specular-excluded measurements, was found to give a better linear correlation with the observer-scaled data. The color of the samples did not appear to significantly change the perceived gloss of the surface.     

Classifying the illumination condition from two light sources by color histogram assessment

We investigate and propose a method for assessment of the illumination condition covering two light sources. The method may be of some support for color vision and multispectral analysis methods that rely on a specific illumination condition. It is constrained to classifying the illumination condition for dielectric objects illuminated by two light sources. The reflected light is modeled by the dichromatic reflection model, which describes the light as the sum of its body reflections and surface reflections. Further, reflected light from an object illuminated by two light sources may give from one to four primary reflections depending on the condition, and it may be expressed as an additive mixture of these reflections. An additive mixture of two reflections expressed in chromaticities is limited to falling within the area enclosed by the chromaticities of the primary reflections of the light sources. So after finding the set of primary chromaticities enclosing the pixel points' chromaticities, it is possible for one to assess the current illumination condition. Since the method operates on pixel points globally, it is independent of illumination geometry and hence may be used on irregular objects. Two experiments are performed. One uses regular objects in a well-controlled laboratory environment and demonstrates that the pixel-point distribution is as expected. The second experiment demonstrates the method's potential use in support of spectroscopic analysis of vegetation through assessing the illumination condition of barley plants in an outdoor illumination condition.     

Adaptive Reversible Visible Watermarking Based on Total Variation for BTC-Compressed Images

Few previous Reversible Visible Watermarking (RVW) schemes have both good transparency and watermark visibility. An adaptive RVW scheme that integrates Total Variation and visual perception in Block Truncation Coding (BTC) compressed domain, called TVB-RVW is proposed in this paper. A new mean image estimation method for BTC-compressed images is first developed with the help of Total Variation. Then, a visual perception factor computation model is devised by fusing texture and luminance characteristics. An adaptive watermark embedding strategy is used to embed the visible watermark with the effect of the visual perception factor in the BTC domain. Moreover, a lossless embedding method of the encrypted visible watermark is exploited to deter illegal watermark removal. The visible watermark can be removed since the visual perception factor and the estimated mean image remain unchanged before and after watermark embedding. Extensive experiments validate the superiority of the proposed algorithm over previous RVW schemes in BTC in terms of the visual quality of watermarked images and watermark visibility, and it can achieve a good balance between transparency and watermark visibility.     

Illumination direction from texture shading

We investigate the ability of human observers to judge the direction of illumination from image texture. Photographs of 61 real surfaces were used, taken from the Columbia-Utrecht Reflectance and Texture (Curet) database (http:/www.cs.columbia.edu/CAVE/curet). All samples were normally viewed but obliquely illuminated, the elevation of the source being 22.5 degrees, 45.0 degrees, or 67.5 degrees. The illumination was with a collimated, parallel beam. Stimuli were presented in random orientation, and observers had to judge both the elevation and the azimuth of the source. Observers judged the azimuth within approximately 15 degrees, except for the fact that they committed random (with approximately 50% probability) sign flips (180 degrees flips). Connected with this finding is the fact that observers judged the illumination to be from above rather than below in the overwhelming majority of cases, despite the fact that each case occurred with equal probability. The elevation of the illumination can be judged to some extent but is not far above chance level. The data are in good agreement with a simple model that bases the estimate of illumination direction on the second-order statistics of local luminance gradients. This locates the locus of the probable mechanism very early in the visual stream.     

Fraunhofer diffraction of a slit aperture between a knife-edge and a metal cylinder

The Fraunhofer diffraction pattern of a slit aperture formed between a reference knife-edge and a metal-cylinder surface is different from that of an ideal slit aperture. This pattern should include reflected light coming from both the front and rear sides of a cylinder surface. To investigate the influence of light reflected from the cylinder surface, we discuss the theoretical consideration based on the simple model of the reflected light on the surface. The experimental setup is designed and constructed to measure the actual diffraction pattern produced by the slit between the knife-edge and the cylinder surface. As a result it is obvious that the reflection of diffracted light on the rear side is dominant in both the simulation and the experiment.     

Correlated color temperature preferred by observers for illumination of artistic paintings

The visual effects of lighting on art paintings is an important aspect that should be considered by museum curators. The aim of this work was to determine the correlated color temperature (CCT) of daylight illumination preferred by observers when appreciating art paintings. Hyperspectral images of 11 oil paintings were collected at the museum, and the appearance of the paintings under daylight illuminants with CCT from 25,000 K to 3600 K was computed. In a psychophysical experiment using precise CRT reproductions of the paintings, observers had to adjust the CCT of the illuminant such that it produced the best visual impression. It was found that the distribution of observers' preferences had a maximum at a CCT of about 5100 K and that this value did not depend on whether the observers were undergraduate students or museum visitors or on the degree of adaptation to the color of the illumination. These results suggest that observers prefer a more bluish-white light than that normally used in museums.     

Analyzing small suprathreshold differences of LCD-generated colors

Small suprathreshold color differences around five CIE color centers were investigated on a typical liquid crystal display (LCD) with fluorescent backlight using the method of constant stimuli. The results were evaluated using probit analysis and compared with surface-color differences of the RIT-DuPont dataset. We focused especially on the relationship between T50 distances obtained from LCD and surface-color stimuli and on the influence of the display's narrowband primaries and its relatively low luminance level on interobserver uncertainty. The low luminance level of the LCD decreases the perceived color differences. However, considering the visual uncertainty of the experimental data, we could not reject the hypothesis that T50 distances from the RIT-DuPont and our experiment agree up to a constant scaling factor. In addition, we found significantly higher interobserver variability in the estimation of small color differences if the colors are viewed on an LCD. There are some indications that color-difference perception might be influenced by individual color-matching functions and, thus, by the spectral power distribution of the stimuli. We provide the experimental data, including all spectral stimuli shown to the observers, on our website.     

A fast color image enhancement algorithm based on Max Intensity Channel

In this paper, we extend image enhancement techniques based on the retinex theory imitating human visual perception of scenes containing high illumination variations. This extension achieves simultaneous dynamic range modification, color consistency, and lightness rendition without multi-scale Gaussian filtering which has a certain halo effect. The reflection component is analyzed based on the illumination and reflection imaging model. A new prior named Max Intensity Channel (MIC) is implemented assuming that the reflections of some points in the scene are very high in at least one color channel. Using this prior, the illumination of the scene is obtained directly by performing a gray-scale closing operation and a fast cross-bilateral filtering on the MIC of the input color image. Consequently, the reflection component of each RGB color channel can be determined from the illumination and reflection imaging model. The proposed algorithm estimates the illumination component which is relatively smooth and maintains the edge details in different regions. A satisfactory color rendition is achieved for a class of images that do not satisfy the gray-world assumption implicit to the theoretical foundation of the retinex. Experiments are carried out to compare the new method with several spatial and transform domain methods. Our results indicate that the new method is superior in enhancement applications, improves computation speed, and performs well for images with high illumination variations than other methods. Further comparisons of images from National Aeronautics and Space Administration and a wearable camera eButton have shown a high performance of the new method with better color restoration and preservation of image details.     

Thresholds for detecting slowly changing Ganzfeld luminances

Detection thresholds for luminance increments or decrements are normally related to rapid light changes. The goal of this study was to determine detection thresholds for slowly changing achromatic Ganzfeld luminances before and after adaptation to a constant Ganzfeld illumination, subsequently called Ganzfeld adaptation. During Ganzfeld adaptation, perceived brightness decreased slowly and leveled off(on average after 5-7 min), despite constant illumination of the retina. The state of adaptation was characterized by using magnitude estimation. Comparing detection thresholds for changing light intensities before and after Ganzfeld adaptation showed that the sensitivity for luminance changes is independent of the perceived brightness. A further issue addressed was the time dependence of the luminance change. Is there a limit below which a change of luminance is no longer perceivable? Even for the slowest gradient tested (0.01 log/min), subjects were able to detect the change of luminance, although they were not able to perceive a continuous brightness change. Similar thresholds (ca. 0.24 log unit) for shallow and steep luminance gradients suggest an absolute luminance detection mechanism. Possible underlying mechanisms and neurophysiological substrates are discussed.     

Effect of spatial structure on colorfulness adaptation for natural images

We examined whether the perception of the colorfulness of an image is influenced by the adaptation of the visual system to natural and shuffled images with different degrees of saturation. In the experiment, observers first became adapted to several images with different levels of saturation and then their colorfulness perception of a test image was measured. The results show that their perception of colorfulness was influenced by their adaptation to the saturation of images. The effect was stronger following adaptation to natural images than to images consisting of a shuffled collage of randomized color blocks, which suggests that the naturalness of the spatial structure of an image affects the strength of the effect.     

The Role of Retro-Reflective Materials in Holography

In taking holograms of solid components, laser light i reflected from the surface of the component to the hologram. In general, the surfaces involved are diffuse, which scatter the reflected light cau ing large intensity los es of the incident illumination and also a depolarization of the highly polarized incident laser light. To illuminate large diffu e surfaced components requires large expensive lasers. The authors have used mall inexpensive la er and retro-reflective coatings on large components, enabling all the incident low intensity laser illumination to be reflected to the hologram. The polarization of the laser light remain unaffected after reflection at the component surface. By retaining the polarization of the incident illumination, high contrast real time fringes are obtained in hologram interferometers. The authors di Cll s the history of retro-reflection referring to British and US Patents and have reviewed the uses of such materials in holography. The main constituent of the latest retro-reflective paints and tapes is an extremely small phere having a core of very high refractive index glass, the outer surface of the sphere being chemically treated to give a lower refractive index: orne retro-reflecli e tape use conventional glass spheres. Such small spheres have been used as imaging lenses with both monochromatic and non-monochromatic component illumination to create 3D images, the images being comparable to those obtained by lenticular or fly’s-eye creen techniques.     

Variational estimation of inhomogeneous specular reflectance and illumination from a single view

Estimating the illumination and the reflectance properties of an object surface from a few images is an important but challenging problem. The problem becomes even more challenging if we wish to deal with real-world objects that naturally have spatially inhomogeneous reflectance. In this paper, we derive a novel method for estimating the spatially varying specular reflectance properties of a surface of known geometry as well as the illumination distribution of a scene from a specular-only image, for instance, recovered from two images captured with a polarizer to separate reflection components. Unlike previous work, we do not assume the illumination to be a single point light source. We model specular reflection with a spherical statistical distribution and encode its spatial variation with a radial basis function (RBF) network of their parameter values, which allows us to formulate the simultaneous estimation of spatially varying specular reflectance and illumination as a constrained optimization based on the I-divergence measure. To solve it, we derive a variational algorithm based on the expectation maximization principle. At the same time, we estimate optimal encoding of the specular reflectance properties by learning the number, centers, and widths of the RBF hidden units. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the method on images of synthetic and real-world objects.     

彩色图像像素分布特征及成像光提取划分研究

目的研究彩色图像像素分布特征及用之提取像素反射和漫射信息的方法,为从图像中提取其内景物客观颜色外貌提供理论依据。方法采用理论分析和实验相结合的方法,剖析图像强度和其内物体及外界光照之间的关联性,阐明图像像素漫射色度和RGB分强度及总强度之间的客观数据分布特征。结果图像反射像素的色度分布具有线性和双曲线特性,而漫射像素的分布具有与光照无关的聚集特性。结论图像反射和漫射像素的分布规律非常不同,采用特定斜率不同的直线可以将之有效分离,再结合特定的像素映射转换机制,就能获得图像内物体及照明的本质颜色特征。     

基于显微光学成像的微细纤维测量识别系统光源优化研究

显微光学成像的纤维识别系统的照明光源,对成像质量有很大影响。由于单个LED光源发光功率有限,且在照射面的光分布不均,导致系统采集到的微纳米级纤维(单丝平均直径15～40μm)图像模糊,影响测量与识别结果的准确性。根据LED的光学特性,对系统的照明光源进行优化设计,设计了3种不同的LED平面光源阵列,并根据LED阵列光源在照射面上的照度表达式,仿真模拟给出LED阵列的照度分布,并以实验进行验证,对系统实际检测的图像进行图像识别处理和图像参数峰值信噪比评价,给出优化结果。研究结果表明,优化后的LED平面光源阵列有效地解决了照度不均导致的微细纤维图像模糊识别不清的问题,优化后得到的纤维样品图像边缘清晰,有效提高了系统检测纤维样品的图像质量,为微细纤维测量识别与研究提供了新的途径。     

Self-referencing substrates for optical interferometric biosensors

Optical interference is a powerful technique for monitoring surface topography or refractive index changes in a thin film layer. Reflectance spectroscopy provides label-free biosensing capability by monitoring small variations in interference signature resulting from optical path length changes from surface-adsorbed biomolecules. Spectral reflectance data can be acquired either by broad wavelength illumination and spectroscopy at a single point, thus necessitating scanning, or by varying the wavelength of illumination and imaging the reflected intensity allowing for acquisition of a spectral image of a large field of view simultaneously. In imaging modalities, intensity fluctuations of the illuminating light source couple into the detected signal, increasing the noise in measured surface profiles. This article introduces a simple technique for eliminating the effects of illumination light power fluctuations by fabricating on-substrate self-reference regions to measure and normalize for the incident intensity, simplifying the overall platform for reflection or transmission-based imaging biosensors. Experimental results demonstrate that the sensitivity performance using self-referencing is equivalent or better than an optimized system with an external reference.     

基于视觉感知的图像自适应半脆弱水印算法

在充分考虑图像视觉感知特性的基础上,提出一种图像自适应半脆弱水印算法.首先利用图像亮度、纹理特性确定水印嵌入比特深度;然后采用自适应LSB替换方法嵌入水印信息,水印嵌入强度依赖于载体图像特征;最后应用优化像素调整进一步提高水印透明性.实验结果表明,算法对偶然攻击有一定的鲁棒性而对恶意攻击比较敏感,且能有效识别图像攻击类...     

Influence of the correlated color temperature of a light source on the color discrimination capacity of the observer

It is well known that there are different preferences in correlated color temperature of light sources for daily living activities or for viewing artistic paintings. There are also data relating the capacity of observers to make judgments on color differences with the spectral power distribution of the light source used. The present work describes a visual color discrimination experiment whose results confirm the existence of a relationship between the correlated color temperature of a light source and the color discrimination capacities of the observers.     

基于Retinex和同态滤波的X射线电池图像增强算法

针对工业X射线电池图像对比度低、视觉效果不好、不同区域处理效果差异大等问题,提出一种基于多尺度Retinex和同态滤波的X射线电池图像增强算法.首先利用多尺度Retinex算法中的高斯滤波对照射分量估计,从而得到反射分量.用改进的直方图均衡化方法来处理照射分量,采用改进的巴特沃斯高通滤波器对反射分量的局部细节增强.接着...