Luminance Contrast Affects the Binocular Color Fusion Limit

ABSTRACT

When the color difference between the images perceived by the left eye and the right eye exceeds a certain threshold, the binocular rivalry could be activated, which is the main cause of visual fatigue. This threshold is referred to as the binocular color fusion limit. Past studies on the quantitative measurement of the binocular color fusion limit were always performed by presenting the stimulus (varying in color, disparity, size, etc.) under a dark background. To investigate how the background luminance and the luminance contrast influence the binocular color fusion limit, a series of forced-choice psychophysical experiments were conducted in a three-dimensional display for three luminance levels of both the stimulus and background. Under each luminance level, the color fusion limit for the D50 chromaticity point was measured on four opposite color directions in the CIE 1976 u_F’v_F’ uniform color space. The results show an increment of color fusion limit as the stimulus-background luminance contrast increases.

KEYWORDS:

• Color fusion limit
• color perception
• binocular vision
• luminance contrast

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data underlying the results presented in this paper are not publicly available at this time but may be obtained from the authors upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This project is financially supported by National Key Research and Development Program of China [2022YFF0902204], National Natural Science Foundation of China [62205018, 62002018, 61960206007].