Modelling the effect of simultaneous contrast on perceived whiteness

The perceived colour from a surface does not only depend on its optical properties and the illumination. Several studies have demonstrated the simultaneous contrast effect that makes the appearance of coloured patches depend on neighbouring colours. In this study the perceived whiteness of white patches surrounded by induction fields of different shades was evaluated by asking observers to give a magnitude estimate of perceived whiteness of the patches in comparison to a white reference. The perceived whiteness of patches with identical tristimulus values was highly dependent on the shade of the induction field and the patch size did not significantly affect the perceived whiteness. The recent CIECAM02-m2 colour appearance model was tested together with two whiteness equations. A combination of CIECAM02-m2 and a non-linear whiteness equation defined in the whole colour space predicted much of the observed simultaneous contrast effect. However, the model performed better for dark induction fields than for light induction fields. The model rated patches surrounded by light blue and light yellow equally, whereas the observers clearly rated the patches with light yellow induction field as whiter than the patches with light blue induction field. A deeper analysis of the CIECAM02-m2 model indicated that the simultaneous contrast model used cannot accurately predict the change in hue for high lightness induction fields. A potential improvement for predicting contrast simultaneous effect would be to base the calculations not only on the difference between the induction field and the background, but on the difference between the patch stimulus and the induction field.