The detectability of one part of an illuminated field which has a straight edge as the border to the remaining part of the field was studied experimentally while the illumination of the total field had an irregular contrast based on a gaussian-noise spatial structure. The two parts of the field had different average illuminations. The detectability of the edge was studied for various illumination differences, field areas, edge lengths, and sharpnesses. The results are discussed in terms of the characteristics of the background noise and the visual system. The observations are interpreted in terms of a model that assumes spatial differentiation and spatial integration.
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