Spatial brightness perception of trichromatic stimuli

An experiment was conducted to examine the effect of tuning optical radiation on brightness perception for younger (18-25 years of age) and older (50 years of age or older) observers. Participants made forced-choice evaluations of the brightness of a full factorial of stimulus pairs selected from two groups of four metameric stimuli The large-field stimuli were created by systematically varying either the red or the blue primary of an RGB LED mixture. The results indicate that light stimuli of equal illuminance and chromaticity do not appear equally bright to either younger or older subjects. The rank-order of brightness is not predicted by current models of human vision or theories of brightness perception including scotopic to photopic or cirtopic to photopic ratio theory, prime color theory, correlated color temperature, V(λ)-based photometry, color quality metrics, linear brightness models, or color appearance models. Age may affect brightness perception when short-wavelength primaries are used, especially those with apeak wavelength shorter than 450 nm. The results suggest the need for the further development of a metric (or metrics) to predict brightness perception and that age should be included as a variable in such models.