A channel-based color fusion technique using multispectral images for night vision enhancement

Yufeng Zheng

doi:10.1117/12.895518

24 September 2011 A channel-based color fusion technique using multispectral images for night vision enhancement

Yufeng Zheng

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 8135, Applications of Digital Image Processing XXXIV; 813511 (2011) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.895518
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2011, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

A fused image using multispectral images can increase the reliability of interpretation because it combines the complimentary information apparent in multispectral images. While a color image can be easily interpreted by human users (for visual analysis), and thus improves observer performance and reaction times. We propose a fast color fusion method, termed as channel-based color fusion, which is efficient for real time applications. Notice that the term of "color fusion" means combing multispectral images into a color-version image with the purpose of resembling natural scenes. On the other hand, false coloring technique usually has no intention of resembling natural scenery. The framework of channel-based color fusion is as follows, (1) prepare for color fusion by preprocessing, image registration and fusion; (2) form a color fusion image by properly assigning multispectral images to red, green, and blue channels; (3) fuse multispectral images (gray fusion) using a wavelet-based fusion algorithm; and (4) replace the value component of color fusion in HSV color space with the gray-fusion image, and finally transform back to RGB space. In night vision imaging, there may be two or several bands of images available, for example, visible (RGB), image intensified (II), near infrared (NIR), medium wave infrared (MWIR), long wave infrared (LWIR). The proposed channel-wise color fusions were tested with two-band (e.g., NIR + LWIR, II + LWIR, RGB + LWIR) or three-band (e.g., RGB + NIR + LWIR) multispectral images. Experimental results show that the colors in the fused images by the proposed method are vivid and comparable with that of the segmentation-based colorization. The processing speed of new method is much faster than any segmentation-based method.

Citation Download Citation

Yufeng Zheng "A channel-based color fusion technique using multispectral images for night vision enhancement", Proc. SPIE 8135, Applications of Digital Image Processing XXXIV, 813511 (24 September 2011); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.895518

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