Detection of small objects on a textured image

This paper presents experimental results on the detection by. an observer of small objects of known shape, on textured images. A method is proposed for. describing, the texture as a sum of random Gaussian fields of various intensities and spatial scales. The effect of the spatial scale of the. texture elements and their intensity on the detectivity of the observer is investigated. Based on the resulting, experimental data, expressions are, proposed for estimating the correct-detection and false-alarm probabilities. (C) 2003 Optical Society of America.