A new study corrects a major flaw in the three-dimensional mathematical space developed by Nobel-winning physicist Erwin Schrodinger and others and used for nearly 100 years by scientists and industry to describe how our eye distinguishes one color from another.
The research aims to enhance scientific visualizations data, improve televisions and recalibrate the textile and dye industries.
"Η αρχική μας ιδέα ήταν να αναπτύξουμε αλγόριθμους για να βελτιώνουμε αυτόματα τους έγχρωμους χάρτες για την οπτικοποίηση δεδομένων, να τους κάνουμε ευκολότερους στην κατανόηση και την ερμηνεία τους", δήλωσε η Roxana Bujack, επιστήμονας υπολογιστών με υπόβαθρο στα μαθηματικά που δημιουργεί επιστημονικές απεικονίσεις στο Los Alamos National Laboratory and main author of the paper.
So the team was surprised to discover that they were the first to find that the long-standing application of Riemannian geometry, which allows the generalization of straight lines to curved surfaces, did not work.
To create industrial standards, an accurate mathematical model of perceived color space is required. The first attempts used Euclidean spaces our familiar geometry taught in high schools. The most advanced models used Riemannian geometry.
These models draw red, green and blue in XNUMXD space. These are the colors that register most strongly on our retinas and the colors that combine to create all the RGB images on your computer screen. In the study, which combines psychology, biology and mathematics, Bujack and her colleagues found that using Riemannian geometry overestimates the perception of large color differences. This is because people perceive a large difference in color to be less than the sum you would get if you added small differences in color between two widely separated shades. Riemannian geometry does not seem to be able to explain this phenomenon.
"We didn't expect this, and we don't yet know the exact geometry of this new color space," Bujack reports.
The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
