Color Palette Selection In Thermal Imaging For Enhancing Situation Awareness During Detection-Recognition Tasks

Human ability to see clearly in dark/poor visibility conditions is very limited. This is because human vision is restricted only to visible portion of electromagnetic (EM) spectrum. Although, humans can perceive a colourful scene when sufficient ambient lighting is present, difficulty to visualize arises when ambient lighting becomes very low. Thus, making it difficult to detect/recognize objects/camouflage in a scene during low lighting conditions. This leads to a lack in situation awareness (SA) of observers as his perception of elements on the screen is affected. Use of thermal imaging essentially which captures information from infrared (IR) region of EM spectrum may help in solving this problem. IR imagery output is presented in different color schemes based on false color mapping. In this experiment, thermal imaging data was recorded for different color palettes during evening (~20 Lux) and night (~00 Lux) conditions. This work compares results of three thermal color palettes: white-hot, ironbow & rainbow, and, predict appropriate color palette to help in enhancing SA via better detection-recognition (DR) during low lighting conditions. Results suggest that use of `white-hot' color palette seems ideal for enhancement of SA when using IR imaging during low ambient lighting conditions.