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Independence of color and luminance edges in natural scenes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2009

THORSTEN HANSEN  and
KARL R. GEGENFURTNER
THORSTEN HANSEN*
Affiliation:
Abteilung Allgemeine Psychologie, Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Giessen, Germany
KARL R. GEGENFURTNER
Affiliation:
Abteilung Allgemeine Psychologie, Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Giessen, Germany
*
*Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Thorsten Hansen, Abteilung Allgemeine Psychologie, Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Otto-Behaghel-Strasse 10F, 35394 Giessen, Germany. E-mail: thorsten.hansen@psychol.uni-giessen.de
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Abstract

Form vision is traditionally regarded as processing primarily achromatic information. Previous investigations into the statistics of color and luminance in natural scenes have claimed that luminance and chromatic edges are not independent of each other and that any chromatic edge most likely occurs together with a luminance edge of similar strength. Here we computed the joint statistics of luminance and chromatic edges in over 700 calibrated color images from natural scenes. We found that isoluminant edges exist in natural scenes and were not rarer than pure luminance edges. Most edges combined luminance and chromatic information but to varying degrees such that luminance and chromatic edges were statistically independent of each other. Independence increased along successive stages of visual processing from cones via postreceptoral color-opponent channels to edges. The results show that chromatic edge contrast is an independent source of information that can be linearly combined with other cues for the proper segmentation of objects in natural and artificial vision systems. Color vision may have evolved in response to the natural scene statistics to gain access to this independent information.

Keywords

Color visionForm visionEdge detectionNatural scene statisticsMutual information
Type
Natural Scene Statistics and Efficient Coding
Information
Visual Neuroscience , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 35 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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