Perceptual Ability with Real-World Nighttime Scenes: Image-Intensified, Infrared, and Fused-Color Imagery

摘要

We investigated human perceptual performance allowed by relatively impover- ished information conveyed in nighttime natural scenes. We used images of night- time outdoor scenes rendered in image-intensified low-light visible (i') sensors, thermal infrared (ir) sensors, and an i~2/ir fusion technique with information added. We found that nighttime imagery provides adequate low-level image infor- mation for effective perceptual organization on a classification task, but that per- formance for exemplars within a given object category is dependent on the image type. Overall performance was best with the false-color fused images. This is con- sistent with the suggestion in the literature that color plays a predominate role in perceptual grouping and segmenting of objects in a scene and supports the sug- gestion that the addition of color in complex achromatic scenes aids the percep- tual organization required for visual search. In the present study we address the issue of assessment of perceptual performance with alternative night-vision sen- sors and fusion methods and begin to characterize perceptual organization abili- ties permitted by the information in relatively impoverished images of complex scenes. Applications of this research include improving night vision, medical, and other devices that use alternative sensors or degraded imagery.