Phantom surface captures stereopsis

A phantom surface is a stereoscopic illusory area that can be seen in depth although there is no conventional stereoscopic cues [Liu, L., Stevenson, S.B., & Schor, C.M. (1994). Quantitative stereoscopic depth without binocular correspondence. Nature, 367, 66-69; Gillam, B. & Nakayama, K. (1999). Quantitative depth for a phantom surface can be based on cyclopean occlusion cues alone. Vision Research, 39, 109-112]. The phenomenon has been explained as an example of half-occlusion processing in which the visual system uses information about cyclopean occlusion structure of the visual world. We created stereo capture stereograms in which phantom surfaces changed the perceived depth of conventionally defined binocular textures. Because conventional stereoscopic matching is strongly affected by half-occlusion processing, we suggest that half-occlusion processing is an integral part of the early stereoscopic processing and solving of the correspondence problem.