Fusion of Images from Different Electro-Optical Sensing Modalities for Surveillance and Navigation Tasks

Abstract

Modern night-time cameras are designed to expand the conditions under which humans can operate. A functional piece of equipment must therefore provide an image that leads to good perceptual awareness in most environmental and operational conditions (to 'own the weather', or 'own the night'). The two most common night-time imaging systems either display emitted infrared (IR) radiation or reflected light, and thus provide complimentary information of the inspected scene. IR cameras have a history of decades of development. Although modern IR cameras function very well under most circumstances, they still have some inherent limitations. First, we will present an experiment that was performed to test the effects of two gray-level and color image fusion schemes on the accuracy with which observers can localize a target while performing a military surveillance task. Second, we will discuss an experiment in which we investigated the merits of a gray-level image fusion method and two different color image fusion schemes for the recognition of detail and for situational awareness. Finally, we will discuss the general findings of these studies.