Fast and true-to-life application of daytime colours to night-time imagery

We developed a fast and efficient method to derive and apply a natural colour mapping for nighttime imagery from multi-band sensors. The colour mapping is derived from the combination of a multi- band image and a corresponding natural colour reference image. The mapping optimizes the match between the multi-band image and the reference image, and yields a night vision image with a colour distribution similar to that of the reference image. The actual mapping procedure is extremely simple and fast, and once it has been derived the colour mapping can be deployed in realtime to other multi-band images. Displaying night-time imagery in natural colours may help human observers to process this type of imagery faster and better, thereby improving situational awareness and reducing reaction times.