ABSTRACT
A consideration of visual psychophysics, image science, and fractal mathematics suggests that a particular optical signature simplifies this problem considerably. It follows that some aspects of fractal image discrimination can emulate natural image discrimination. Interestingly, the interior portion of the resulting two-dimensional discrimination space is remarkably flat, a feature that some psychophysicists have gone to great lengths to obtain in nonlinear mappings of other perceptual systems. More complicated schemes are possible, including the use of multi-fractals, which mimic blends of particular textures that occur in natural images. Simultaneous viewing simulates the task of making a side-by-side comparison of fractal camouflaged targets, while sequential viewing simulates the task of comparing a target to one that is in memory; in theory and experiment the two paradigms can lead to somewhat different results. If it were necessary to consider the set of all possible targets, backgrounds, and camouflage, the combinatorial problem would be disheartening.
