Kontrastübertragung des Auges als Filterfunktion für die Diskrimination visueller Reizmuster

The ergonomic design of visual displays is an important task in the development of the man-machine interface with complex vehicle or process guidance systems. One aspect of this task is the design of symbol sets. At present there is no known method by which the suitability of a symbol set can be evaluated without conducting expensive and time-consuming psychophysical tests. The algorithm presented in this paper allows first order prediction of ranking visual stimuli with regard to form discrimination performed by humans. As an essential feature this model comprises the use of the human visual modulation transfer function (MTF) as a filter of the spatial frequency components of the stimuli. The procedure generates a distance metric upon which visual discrimination errors are predicted or against which human errors can be correlated. The method is tested on the results of a recognition task with thermal images.