Towards an optimal color representation for multiband nightvision systems
conference paper
We present a new Tri-band Color Low-light Observation (TRICLOBS) system The TRICLOBS is anall-day all-weather surveillance and navigation tool. Its sensor suite consists of two digital image intensifiers and an uncooled longwave infrared microbolometer. This sensor suite registers the visual, near-infrared and longwave infrared bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. The optical axes of the three cameras are aligned, using two dichroic beam splitters. A fast lookuptable based color transform (the Color-the-Night color mapping principle) is used to represent the TRICLOBS image in natural daylight colors (using information in the visual and NIR bands) and to maximize the detectability of thermal targets (using the LWIR signal). A bottom-up statistical visual saliency mode is deployed in the initial optimization of the color mapping for surveillance and navigation purposes. Extensive observer experiments will result in further optimization of the color representation for a range of different tasks.
Topics
TNO Identifier
93996
Publisher
International Society of Information Fusion
Source title
Proceedings 12th International Conference on Information Fusion, Fusion 2009, 6-9 July 2009, Seattle, USA
Pages
1417-1423