Simple Analysis Of Random-Dot Stereograms And Kinematograms.

In recent years important new stimuli for studies of human stereo and motion perception have been the Julesz random-dot stereograms and Koenderink's random-dot kinematograms. With such stimuli the remarkable properties of human vision to perceive differentials of stereo depth or motion from pairs of individually formless images have been demonstrated. At the same time there has been considerable speculation as to how human vision can achieve such performance, it being usually assumed that a considerable amount of perceptual association and interpretation is involved. In this paper it is shown that, starting with a particular interpretation of early human vision, one can extract local stereo disparity or local motion to a very high accuracy from random-dot patterns very simply and directly, and generate approximate boundaries of stereo depth discontinuity or motion disruption. These findings provide both a simple explanation of some of the workings of human vision and a very simple practical technique for use in computer vision.