Browsing by Author "Doerschner, K."

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Open Access
Assessment of whole-brain white matter by DTI in autosomal recessive spastic ataxia of charlevoix-saguenay
(American Society of Neuroradiology, 2013) Oguz, K. K.; Haliloglu, G.; Temucin, C.; Gocmen, R.; Has, A. C.; Doerschner, K.; Dolgun, A.; Alikasifoglu, M.
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Extension and characteristics of WM involvement other than the brain stem remain inadequately investigated in ARSACS. The aim of this study was to investigate whole-brain WM alterations in patients with ARSACS. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Nine Turkish unrelated patients with ARSACS and 9 sex- and age-matched healthy control participants underwent neurologic examination, molecular studies, electrophysiologic studies, and DTI of the brain. TBSS was used for whole-brain voxelwise analysis of FA, AD, RD, mean diffusivity of WM. Tractographies for the CST and TPF were also computed. RESULTS: Molecular studies revealed 8 novel mutations (3 nonsense, 4 missense, and 1 frameshift insertion) and a missense variation in the SACS gene. Thick TPF displaced and compressed the CST in the pons. The TPF had increased FA, decreased RD, and increased AD, which may be attributed to hypertrophy and/or hypermyelination. Widespread decreased FA and increased RD, suggesting demyelination, was found in the limbic, commissural, and projection fibers. In addition to demyelination, CST coursing cranial and caudal to the pons also showed a marked decrease in AD, suggesting axonal degeneration. Electrophysiologic studies revealed findings that concur with demyelination and axonal involvement. CONCLUSIONS: In addition to developmental changes of the TPF and their effects on the CST in the brain stem, axonal degeneration mainly along the pyramidal tracts and widespread demyelination in WM also occur in patients with ARSACS. Widespread tissue damage may be associated with extensive loss of sacsin protein in the brain and may explain a wide range of progressive neurologic abnormalities in patients with ARSACS.
Open Access
Detection and localization of specular surfaces using image motion cues
(Springer, 2014) Yilmaz, O.; Doerschner, K.
Successful identification of specularities in an image can be crucial for an artificial vision system when extracting the semantic content of an image or while interacting with the environment. We developed an algorithm that relies on scale and rotation invariant feature extraction techniques and uses motion cues to detect and localize specular surfaces. Appearance change in feature vectors is used to quantify the appearance distortion on specular surfaces, which has previously been shown to be a powerful indicator for specularity (Doerschner et al. in Curr Biol, 2011). The algorithm combines epipolar deviations (Swaminathan et al. in Lect Notes Comput Sci 2350:508–523, 2002) and appearance distortion, and succeeds in localizing specular objects in computer-rendered and real scenes, across a wide range of camera motions and speeds, object sizes and shapes, and performs well under image noise and blur conditions.
Open Access
Differences in illumination estimation in #thedress
(Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology Inc., 2017) Toscani, M.; Gegenfurtner, K. R.; Doerschner, K.
We investigated whether people who report different colors for #thedress do so because they have different assumptions about the illumination in #thedress scene. We introduced a spherical illumination probe (Koenderink, Pont, van Doorn, Kappers, & Todd, 2007) into the original photograph, placed in fore-, or background of the scene and-for each location-let observers manipulate the probe's chromaticity, intensity and the direction of the illumination. Their task was to adjust the probe such that it would appear as a white sphere in the scene. When the probe was located in the foreground, observers who reported the dress to be white (white perceivers) tended to produce bluer adjustments than observers who reported it as blue (blue perceivers). Blue perceivers tended to perceive the illumination as less chromatic. There were no differences in chromaticity settings between perceiver types for the probe placed in the background. Perceiver types also did not differ in their illumination intensity and direction estimates across probe locations. These results provide direct support for the idea that the ambiguity in the perceived color of the dress can be explained by the different assumptions that people have about the illumination chromaticity in the foreground of the scene. In a second experiment we explore the possibility that blue perceivers might overall be less sensitive to contextual cues, and measure white and blue perceivers' dress color matches and labels for manipulated versions of the original photo. Results indeed confirm that contextual cues predominantly affect white perceivers.
Open Access
Effects of surface reflectance and 3D shape on perceived rotation axis
(Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, 2013) Doerschner, K.; Yilmaz, O.; Kucukoglu, G.; Fleming, R. W.
Surface specularity distorts the optic flow generated by a moving object in a way that provides important cues for identifying surface material properties (Doerschner, Fleming et al., 2011). Here we show that specular flow can also affect the perceived rotation axis of objects. In three experiments, we investigate how threedimensional shape and surface material interact to affect the perceived rotation axis of unfamiliar irregularly shaped and isotropic objects. We analyze observers' patterns of errors in a rotation axis estimation task under four surface material conditions: shiny, matte textured, matte untextured, and silhouette. In addition to the expected large perceptual errors in the silhouette condition, we find that the patterns of errors for the other three material conditions differ from each other and across shape category, yielding the largest differences in error magnitude between shiny and matte, textured isotropic objects. Rotation axis estimation is a crucial implicit computational step to perceive structure from motion; therefore, we test whether a structure from a motion-based model can predict the perceived rotation axis for shiny and matte, textured objects. Our model's predictions closely follow observers' data, even yielding the same reflectance-specific perceptual errors. Unlike previous work (Caudek & Domini, 1998), our model does not rely on the assumption of affine image transformations; however, a limitation of our approach is its reliance on projected correspondence, thus having difficulty in accounting for the perceived rotation axis of smooth shaded objects and silhouettes. In general, our findings are in line with earlier research that demonstrated that shape from motion can be extracted based on several different types of optical deformation (Koenderink & Van Doorn, 1976; Norman & Todd, 1994; Norman, Todd, & Orban, 2004; Pollick, Nishida, Koike, & Kawato, 1994; Todd, 1985).
Open Access
Effects of surface reflectance on local second order shape estimation in dynamic scenes
(Elsevier Ltd, 2015) Dövencioğlu, D.N.; Wijntjes, M.W.A.; Ben-Shahar O.; Doerschner, K.
In dynamic scenes, relative motion between the object, the observer, and/or the environment projects as dynamic visual information onto the retina (optic flow) that facilitates 3D shape perception. When the object is diffusely reflective, e.g. a matte painted surface, this optic flow is directly linked to object shape, a property found at the foundations of most traditional shape-from-motion (SfM) schemes. When the object is specular, the corresponding specular flow is related to shape curvature, a regime change that challenges the visual system to determine concurrently both the shape and the distortions of the (sometimes unknown) environment reflected from its surface. While human observers are able to judge the global 3D shape of most specular objects, shape-from-specular-flow (SFSF) is not veridical. In fact, recent studies have also shown systematic biases in the perceived motion of such objects. Here we focus on the perception of local shape from specular flow and compare it to that of matte-textured rotating objects. Observers judged local surface shape by adjusting a rotation and scale invariant shape index probe. Compared to shape judgments of static objects we find that object motion decreases intra-observer variability in local shape estimation. Moreover, object motion introduces systematic changes in perceived shape between matte-textured and specular conditions. Taken together, this study provides a new insight toward the contribution of motion and surface material to local shape perception. © 2015 The Authors.
Open Access
Estimating the glossiness transfer function induced by illumination change and testing its transitivity
(Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, 2010) Doerschner, K.; Boyacı, Hüseyin; Maloney, Laurence T.
The light reflected from a glossy surface depends on the reflectance properties of that surface as well as the flow of light in the scene, the light field. We asked four observers to compare the glossiness of pairs of surfaces under two different realword light fields, and used this data to estimate a transfer function that captures how perceived glossiness is remapped in changing from one real-world light field to a second. We wished to determine the form of the transfer function and to test whether for any set of three light fields the transfer function from light field 1 to light field 2 and the transfer function from light field 2 to light field 3 could be used to predict the glossiness transfer function from light field 1 to light field 3. Observers' estimated glossiness transfer functions for three sets of light fields were best described by a linear model. The estimated transfer functions exhibited the expected transitivity pattern for three out of four observers. The failure of transitivity for one observer, while significant, was less than 12.5% of the gloss range.
Open Access
Human visual cortical responses to specular and matte motion flows
(Frontiers Media S. A, 2015) Kam, T.-E.; Mannion, D.J.; Lee, S.-W.; Doerschner, K.; Kersten, D.J.
Determining the compositional properties of surfaces in the environment is an important visual capacity. One such property is specular reflectance, which encompasses the range from matte to shiny surfaces. Visual estimation of specular reflectance can be informed by characteristic motion profiles; a surface with a specular reflectance that is difficult to determine while static can be confidently disambiguated when set in motion. Here, we used fMRI to trace the sensitivity of human visual cortex to such motion cues, both with and without photometric cues to specular reflectance. Participants viewed rotating blob-like objects that were rendered as images (photometric) or dots (kinematic) with either matte-consistent or shiny-consistent specular reflectance profiles. We were unable to identify any areas in low and mid-level human visual cortex that responded preferentially to surface specular reflectance from motion. However, univariate and multivariate analyses identified several visual areas; V1, V2, V3, V3A/B, and hMT+, capable of differentiating shiny from matte surface flows. These results indicate that the machinery for extracting kinematic cues is present in human visual cortex, but the areas involved in integrating such information with the photometric cues necessary for surface specular reflectance remain unclear. © 2015 Kam, Mannion, Lee, Doerschner and Kersten.
Open Access
Perceived glossiness in high dynamic range scenes
(Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, 2010) Doerschner, K.; Maloney,Laurence T.; Boyaci, Hüseyin
We investigated how spatial pattern, background, and dynamic range affect perceived gloss in brightly lit real scenes. Observers viewed spherical objects against uniform backgrounds. There were three possible objects. Two were black matte spheres with circular matte white dots painted on them (matte-dot spheres). The third sphere was painted glossy black (glossy black sphere). Backgrounds were either black or white matte, and observers saw each of the objects in turn on each background. Scenes were illuminated by an intense collimated source. On each trial, observers matched the apparent albedo of the sphere to an albedo reference scale and its apparent gloss to a gloss reference scale. We found that mattedot spheres and the black glossy sphere were perceived as glossy on both backgrounds. All spheres were judged to be significantly glossier when in front of the black background. In contrast with previous research using conventional computer displays, we find that background markedly affects perceived gloss. This finding is surprising because darker surfaces are normally perceived as glossier (F. Pellacini, J. A. Ferwerda, & D. P. Greenberg, 2000). We conjecture that there are cues to surface material signaling glossiness present in high dynamic range scenes that are absent or weak in scenes presented using conventional computer displays.
Open Access
Rapid classification of specular and diffuse reflection from image velocities
(Elsevier BV, 2011-09) Doerschner, K.; Kersten, D.; Schrater, P. R.
We propose a method for rapidly classifying surface reflectance directly from the output of spatiotemporal filters applied to an image sequence of rotating objects. Using image data from only a single frame, we compute histograms of image velocities and classify these as being generated by a specular or a diffusely reflecting object. Exploiting characteristics of material-specific image velocities we show that our classification approach can predict the reflectance of novel 3D objects, as well as human perception.
Open Access
Relative flattening between velvet and matte 3D shapes: Evidence for similar shape-from-shading computations
(Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, 2012) Wijntjes, M. W. A.; Doerschner, K.; Kucukoglu, G.; Pont, S. C.
Among other cues, the visual system uses shading to infer the 3D shape of objects. The shading pattern depends on the illumination and reflectance properties (BRDF). In this study, we compared 3D shape perception between identical shapes with different BRDFs. The stimuli were photographed 3D printed random smooth shapes that were either painted matte gray or had a gray velvet layer. We used the gauge figure task (J. J. Koenderink, A. J. van Doorn, & A. M. L. Kappers, 1992) to quantify 3D shape perception. We found that the shape of velvet objects was systematically perceived to be flatter than the matte objects. Furthermore, observers' judgments were more similar for matte shapes than for velvet shapes. Lastly, we compared subjective with veridical reliefs and found large systematic differences: Both matte and velvet shapes were perceived more flat than the actual shape. The isophote pattern of a flattened Lambertian shape resembles the isophote pattern of an unflattened velvet shape. We argue that the visual system uses a similar shape-from-shading computation for matte and velvet objects that partly discounts material properties.
Open Access
Specular motion and 3D shape estimation
(Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology Inc., 2017) Dövencioğlu, D. N.; Ben-Shahar, O.; Barla, P.; Doerschner, K.
Dynamic visual information facilitates three-dimensional shape recognition. It is still unclear, however, whether the motion information generated by moving specularities across a surface is congruent to that available from optic flow produced by a matte-textured shape. Whereas the latter is directly linked to the firstorder properties of the shape and its motion relative to the observer, the specular flow, the image flow generated by a specular object, is less sensitive to the object's motion and is tightly related to second-order properties of the shape. We therefore hypothesize that the perceived bumpiness (a perceptual attribute related to curvature magnitude) is more stable to changes in the type of motion in specular objects compared with their matte-textured counterparts. Results from two twointerval forced-choice experiments in which observers judged the perceived bumpiness of perturbed spherelike objects support this idea and provide an additional layer of evidence for the capacity of the visual system to exploit image information for shape inference. © 2017 The Authors.
Open Access
Visual motion and the perception of surface material
(Cell Press, 2011) Doerschner, K.; Fleming, R. W.; Yilmaz, O.; Schrater, P. R.; Hartung, B.; Kersten, D.
Many critical perceptual judgments, from telling whether fruit is ripe to determining whether the ground is slippery, involve estimating the material properties of surfaces. Very little is known about how the brain recognizes materials, even though the problem is likely as important for survival as navigating or recognizing objects. Though previous research has focused nearly exclusively on the properties of static images [1-16], recent evidence suggests that motion may affect the appearance of surface material [17-19]. However, what kind of information motion conveys and how this information may be used by the brain is still unknown. Here, we identify three motion cues that the brain could rely on to distinguish between matte and shiny surfaces. We show that these motion measurements can override static cues, leading to dramatic changes in perceived material depending on the image motion characteristics. A classifier algorithm based on these cues correctly predicts both successes and some striking failures of human material perception. Together these results reveal a previously unknown use for optic flow in the perception of surface material properties.