Perceptual ability with real-world nighttime scenes: image-intensified, infrared, and fused-color imagery

We investigated human perceptual performance allowed by relatively impoverished information conveyed in nighttime natural scenes. We used images of nighttime outdoor scenes rendered in image-intensified low-light visible (i2) sensors, thermal infrared (ir) sensors, and an i2/ir fusion technique with information added. We found that nighttime imagery provides adequate low-level image information for effective perceptual organization on a classification task, but that performance 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 consistent 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 suggestion that the addition of color in complex achromatic scenes aids the perceptual organization required for visual search. In the present study, we address the issue of assessment of perceptual performance with alternative night-vision sensors and fusion methods and begin to characterize perceptual organization abilities 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.