OCCLUSION EDGE BLUR - A CUE TO RELATIVE VISUAL DEPTH

We studied whether the blur/sharpness of an occlusion boundary between a sharply focused surface and a blurred surface is used as a relative depth cue. Observers judged relative depth in pairs of images that di ffered only in the blurriness of the common boundary between two adjoi ning texture regions, one blurred and one sharply focused. Two experim ents were conducted; in both, observers consistently used the blur of the boundary as a cue to relative depth. However, the strength of the cue, relative to other cues, varied across observers. The occlusion ed ge blur cue can resolve the near/far ambiguity inherent in depth-from- focus computations. (C) 1996 Optical Society of America