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Tutorial: Color in Scientific Visualization
A tutorial created by the High Performance Scientific Computing (HPSC) project at the University of Colorado at Boulder with a grant from the National Science Foundation. Although it's getting slightly dated, and is written for programmers using high-octane number crunching packages like MATLAB, it is possible to find some useful insights into scientific visualization and human perception hidden among the exercises.
"The eye is not as sensitive to blue as it is to other colors. First of all, most cones that receive short wavelengths (like blue and indigo) are on the edges, not in the center, of the retina. Secondly, the lens absorbs part of the wavelength light. Finally, the short wavelength cones that are distributed over the surface of the retina are far apart, due to their low number. For these reasons, small blue objects are hard to see and blue objects on a black background are almost impossible to see. The more one tries to focus on blue objects, the more they tend to disappear."