• WAXMAN ET AL. Solid-State Color Night Vision: Fusion of Low-Light Visible and Thermal Infrared Imagery Solid-State Color Night Vision: Fusion of Low-Light Visible and Thermal Infrared Imagery

■ We describe an apparatus and methodology to support real-time color imaging for night operations. Registered imagery obtained in the visible through nearinfrared band is combined with thermal infrared imagery by using principles of biological opponent-color vision. Visible imagery is obtained with a Gen III image intensifier tube fiber-optically coupled to a conventional charge-coupled device (CCD), and thermal infrared imagery is obtained by using an uncooled thermal imaging array. The two fields of view are matched and imaged through a dichroic beam splitter to produce realistic color renderings of a variety of night scenes. We also demonstrate grayscale and color fusion of intensified-CCD/FLIR imagery. Progress in the development of a low-light-sensitive visible CCD imager with high resolution and wide intrascene dynamic range, operating at thirty frames per second, is described. Example low-light CCD imagery obtained under controlled illumination conditions, from full moon down to overcast starlight, processed by our adaptive dynamic-range algorithm, is shown. The combination of a low-light visible CCD imager and a thermal infrared microbolometer array in a single dualban