ABSTRACT
A filtering approach to understanding visual perception is shown to provide a framework for understanding certain aspects of how we see contrast, size, and form in simple gratings and letters as well as more complex visual illusions and portraits. Gestalt laws of closure, wholeness, proximity, and similarity are demonstrated using filtered images. Complex variations in the perceived magnitude of Müller-Lyer illusions are well predicted from computer data based on biological filtering. A physics of form perception is used to relate the detection and identification of Snellen type letters to individual contrast sensitivity functions. These results suggest that biologically based filtering and linear systems analysis, typified by Fourier techniques, can provide important tools with which to probe the foundations of our visual world.
