A toolbox and sample object perception data for equalization of natural images

Data Brief. 2015 Nov 6:5:846-51. doi: 10.1016/j.dib.2015.10.030. eCollection 2015 Dec.

Abstract

For psychologists and neuroscientists, careful selection of their stimuli is essential, so that low-level visual features such as color or spatial frequency do not serve as confounds between conditions of interest. Here, we detail the Natural Image Statistical Toolbox, which allows scientists to measure, visualize, and control stimulus sets along a set of low-level visual properties. Additionally, we provide a set of object images varying along several perceptual object properties, including physical size and interaction envelope size (i.e., the space around an object transversed during an interaction), serving as a test-bed for the Natural Image Statistical Toolbox. This stimulus set is also a highly characterized set useful to psychology and neuroscience studies on object perception.

Keywords: Natural image statistics; Object interaction envelope; Object perception; Spatial frequency.