Andrew B. Watson

Biography

Dr. Watson is the Senior Scientist for Vision Research and Director of the Vision Group at NASA Ames Research Center. He studied perceptual psychology and physiology at Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D. 1977), and did postdoctoral research at Cambridge and Stanford Universities. Dr. Watson conducts research on visual perception and its application to coding, understanding, and display of visual information. He is the author of over 100 scientific papers on human vision, visual neuroscience, image quality, and digital imaging. He has five patents, in image compression, video quality, and detection of artifacts in display manufacturing. In 2001, he founded the Journal of Vision (http://journalofvision.org/), where he now serves as Editor-in-Chief. He has received FellowAwards from the Optical Society of America, the Association for Research inVision and Ophthalmology, and the Society for Information Display. He has also served as an Editor for the journals Visual Neuroscience , Journal of Mathematical Psychology, and Displays: Technology and Applications. With Albert J. Ahumada, Jr, he was the recipient of the 1990 H. Julian Allen Award, and in 1994 was appointed Associate Fellow of Ames Research Center. He is the 2007 recipient of the Otto Schade Award from the Society for Information Display, and the 2008 winner of the Special Recognition Award from the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. He has served as a member of the National Research Council Committee on Vision, and on program committees for the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, the Society for Information Display, the Optical Society of America, and the European Conference on Visual Perception.

Contact Information

(650) 604-5419
(650) 604-3323 (fax)
andrew.b.watson@nasa.gov
MS 262-2 NASA Ames Research Center
Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000

Selected Publications

• Watson, A. B., & Ahumada, A. J. (2011). Blur Clarified: A review and synthesis of blur discrimination. Journal of Vision, 11(5) (in press).
• Watson, A. B. (2011). Video Acuity: A Metric to Quantify the Effective Performance of Video Systems. Paper presented at the Optical Society of America, Imaging Systems Applications Topical Meeting.
• Watson, A. B. (2011). It seemed like a good idea at the time: A brief history of Journal of Vision. Journal of Vision, 11(5), 1-12, http://journalofvision.org/11/5/1/. http://www.journalofvision.org/content/11/5/ii.full
• Watson, A. B. (2010). Display motion blur: Comparison of measurement methods. Journal of the Society for Information Display, 18(2), 179-190.
• Watson, A. B. (2009). Comparing citations and downloads for individual articles. Journal of Vision, 9(4), 1-4, http://journalofvision.org/9/4/i/.
• Watson, A., Ramirez, C. V., & Salud, E. (2009). Predicting Visibility of Aircraft. PLoS ONE, 4(5), e5594, http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0005594.
• Watson, A. B., & Ahumada, A. J., Jr. (2008). Predicting visual acuity from wavefront aberrations. Journal of Vision, 8(4), 1-19, http://journalofvision.org/8/4/17/.
• Watson, A. B. (2007). Measuring demand for online articles at the Journal of Vision. Journal of Vision, 7(7), 1-3, http://journalofvision.org/7/7/i/
• Watson, A.B. (2006). The Spatial Standard Observer: A human vision model for display inspection. SID Symposium Digest of Technical Papers, Vol 37, pp. 1312 - 1315.
• Liu, Z., Karam, L. J., & Watson, A. B. (2006). JPEG2000 Encoding with Perceptual Distortion Control. IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 15(7), 1763-1778.
• Watson, A. B., & Ahumada, A. J., Jr (2005). A standard model for foveal detection of spatial contrast. Journal of Vision, 5(9), 717-740, http://journalofvision.org/5/9/6/
• Watson, A. B. (2005). Draft Standard for the Subjective Measurement of Visual Impairments in Digital Video Using a Just Noticeable Difference Scale (IEEE Draft Standard No. IEEE P1486/D07): IEEE G-2.1 Audio-Video Techniques Committee, G-2.1.6 Subcommittee on Video Compression Measurements of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society.
  
• Watson, A. B., & Ahumada, A. J., Jr. (2004). Human optical image quality and the spatial standard observer. Journal of Vision, 4(11), 2a, http://journalofvision.org/4/11/2/.
  
• Wuerger, S., Watson, A. B., & Ahumada, A. J., Jr. (2002). Toward a standard observer for spatio-chromatic detection. Proceedings of the SPIE, 4662(19), 159-172.
  
• Watson, A. B., & Malo, J. (2002). Video quality measures based on the Standard Spatial Observer. ICIP Proceedings, III-41-44, Paper presented at the International Conference on Image Processing, Rochester, NY.
  
• Carney, T., Klein, S. A., Beutter, B., Norcia, A. M., Chen, C. C., Tyler, C. W., et al. (2002). Extending the modelfest image/threshold database into the spatio-temporal domain. Proceedings of the SPIE, 4662(16), 138-148.
  
• Watson, A. B., & Kreslake, L. (2001). Measurement of visual impairment scales for digital video. Proceedings of the SPIE, 4299, 79-89.
  
• Watson, A. B., Hu, J., & McGowan, J. F., III. (2001). Digital video quality metric based on human vision. Journal of Electronic Imaging, 10(1), 20-29, http://vision.arc.nasa.gov/publications/jei2000_2wc.doc.pdf.
  
• Watson, A. B. (2001). Welcome to the Journal of Vision. Journal of Vision, 1(1), 1x, http://journalofvision.org/1/1/i.
• Watson, A. B. (2000). Visual detection of spatial contrast patterns: Evaluation of five simple models. Optics Express, 6(1), 12-33, http://www.opticsexpress.org/oearchive/source/14103.htm.
  
• Barth, E., & Watson, A. B. (2000). A geometric framework for nonlinear visual coding. Optics Express, 7(4), 155-165, http://www.opticsexpress.org/abstract.cfm?URI=OPEX-7-4-155.
  
• Watson, A. B., Hu, J., McGowan, J. F., III, & Mulligan, J. B. (1999). Design and performance of a digital video quality metric. SPIE Proceedings, 3644, 168-174.
  
• Solomon, J. A., Watson, A. B., & Morgan, M. J. (1999). Transducer model produces facilitation from opposite-sign flanks. Vision Res, 39(5), 987-992.
  
• Watson, A. B. (1998). Toward a perceptual video quality metric. SPIE Proceedings, 3299, 139-147.
  
• Watson, A. B. (1998). The search for optimal visual stimuli. Vision Research, 38(11), 1619-1621.
  
• Watson, A. B., Taylor, M., & Borthwick, R. (1997). Image quality and entropy masking. SPIE Proceedings, 3016, 2-12.
  
• Watson, A. B., & Solomon, J. A. (1997). Psychophysica: Mathematica notebooks for psychophysical experiments. Spatial Vision, 10(4), 447-466.
  
• Watson, A. B., & Solomon, J. A. (1997). Model of visual contrast gain control and pattern masking. Journal of the Optical Society A, 14, 2379 - 2391, http://josaa.osa.org/abstract.cfm?id=1940.
  
• Rohaly, A. M., Ahumada, A. J., Jr., & Watson, A. B. (1997). Object detection in natural backgrounds predicted by discrimination performance and models. Vision Research, 37(23), 3225-3235.
  
• Eckstein, M. P., Ahumada, A. J., Jr., & Watson, A. B. (1997). Visual signal detection in structured backgrounds. II. Effects of contrast gain control, background variations and white noise. Journal of the Optical Society A, 14(9), 2406-2419.
  
• Eckstein, M. P., Ahumada, A. J., Jr., & Watson, A. B. (1997). Image discrimination models predict signal detection in medical images. SPIE Proceedings, 3016.
  
• Watson, A. B. & Solomon, J. A. (1997). A model of visual contrast gain control and pattern masking. Journal of the Optical Society A , 14, 2378 - 2390.
• Watson, A. B., G. Y. Yang, J. A. Solomon, and J. Villasenor, 1997, Visibility of wavelet quantization noise: IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, v. 6, p. 1164-1175.
• Andrew B. Watson & Kathleen Turano, (1995). The optimal motion stimulus Vision Research 35(3), 325-336.
• Watson, A. B., & Eckert, M. P. (1994). Motion-Contrast Sensitivity: Visibility of Motion Gradients of Various Spatial Frequencies. Journal of the Optical Society of America A 11(2), 496-505.
• Watson, A. B. (1993). Digital images and human vision. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
• Watson, A. B. (1992). Transfer of contrast sensitivity in linear visual networks. Visual Neuroscience 8, 65-76.
• Watson, A. B. (1990). Gain, noise, and contrast sensitivity of linear visual neurons. Visual Neuroscience 4, 147-157.
• Watson, A. B., & Ahumada, A. J., Jr. (1989). A hexagonal orthogonal oriented pyramid as a model of image representation in visual cortex. IEEE Trans.Biomed. Eng. 36(1), 97-106.
• Watson, A. B. (1987). The cortex transform: Rapid computation of simulated neural images. Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing 39(3), 311-327.
• Watson, A. B. (1986). Temporal Sensitivity. In K. Boff, L. Kaufman, & J. Thomas (Ed.), Handbook of Perception and Human Performance New York: Wiley.
• Watson, A. B., Ahumada, A. J., Jr., & Farrell, J. (1986). Window of visibility: psychophysical theory of fidelity in time-sampled visual motion displays. Journal of the Optical Society of America A 3(3), 300-307.
• Watson, A. B., & Ahumada, A. J., Jr. (1985). Model of human visual-motion sensing. Journal of the Optical Society of America A 2(2), 322-342.
• Watson, A. B. (1983). Detection and recognition of simple spatial forms. In O. J. Braddick, & A. C. Sleigh (Ed.), Physical and biological processing of images Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
• Watson, A. B., Barlow, H. B., & Robson, J. G. (1983). What does the eye see best? Nature 302(5907), 419-422.
• Andrew B. Watson & Carlo Tiana, (1992). Color motion video coded by perceptual components Society for Information Display Digest of Technical Papers 23, 314-317.