How does the brain arrive at a color constant descriptor?

Abstract

Color is not a physical quantity which can be measured. Yet we attach it to the objects around us. Colors appear to be approximately constant to a human observer. They are an important cue in everyday life. Today, it is known that the corpus callosum plays an important role in color perception. Area V4 contains cells which seem to respond to the reflectance of an object irrespective of the wavelength composition of the light reflected by the object. What is not known is how the brain arrives at a color constant or approximately color constant descriptor. A number of theories about color perception have been put forward. Most theories are phenomenological descriptions of color vision. However, what is needed in order to understand how the visual system works is a computational theory. With this contribution we describe a computational theory for color perception which is much simpler in comparison to previously published theories yet effective at computing a color constant descriptor. © 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.