Color Night Vision for Detection, Indications, and Warnings

Color night vision offers major advantages to the warfighter, aircrew, law enforcement, and special operations forces, by improving scene understanding and orientation. While false color imagery has been generated by the fusion of monochrome visible imagery with various bands in the thermal IR, this technique suffers from the fact that the color in the fused image has nothing to do with colors perceived by the human eye and used by the human brain for scene understanding and object recognition. True color imagery, on the other hand, utilizes information in the visible band to replicate the colors as would be seen in natural daylight. DoD studies have shown that reaction time and target detection ability are improved when comparing true color to monochrome imagery. This proposal addresses the development of a prototype true color night vision (TCNV) image intensified camera that uses novel filter technology and image processing algorithms.. Previous attempts to develop TCNV using similar approaches suffered from inadequate sensitivity and signal levels. In the current approach, the inclusion of nearly 100% of the available NIR signal in conjunction with appropriate image processing schemes can dramatically improve the overall signal to noise level and also allows an operator to view laser aiming devices. In the Phase-I project, OKSI demonstrated the feasibility of the approach through analysis of computer simulations, along with laboratory and outdoor experiments. In Phase-II, OKSI will construct a full working prototype system that will be available for testing by DoD personal. Under an optional task a real-time video rate performance will be demonstrated, with further miniaturization under a subsequent option.