Own the night with flying colors: towards ergonomic full color multiband night vision systems

Recently we introduced a method for applying natural daytime colors to multi-band night-time images. In this method statistical properties of a reference daytime color image are transferred to the multi-band image. Although the method yields nice results, its practical value is limited since it is computationally expensive, and it does not provide color constancy for dynamic imagery. Here we present a new fast and efficient method to derive and apply a natural color mapping for night-time imagery from multi-band sensors. This method derives a color mapping from the combination of a multi-band image and a corresponding natural color reference image. The mapping optimizes the match between the multi-band image and the reference image, and yields a nightvision image with a color distribution similar to that of the reference image. The actual mapping procedure is extremely simple and fast. Once it has been derived the color mapping can be deployed in realtime to other multi-band images. We argue that displaying night-time imagery in natural colors may help human observers to process this type of imagery faster and better, thereby improving situational awareness and reducing reaction times. We present a portable hardware implementation, based on a laptop and two dual-band nightvision systems (one Visual/NIR, the other Visual/LWIR), that will be used to assess the potential benefits and limitations of night vision color systems in realistic field tests.