Night-vision cameras convert infrared light – outside the spectrum visible to humans – into visible light so we can “see in the dark”. But this infrared information only allows a black-and-white image to be constructed. Now, AI can colourise these images for a more natural feel.
Andrew Browne at the University of California, Irvine, and his colleagues used a camera that can detect both visible light and part of the infrared spectrum to take 140 images of different faces. The team then trained a neural network to spot correlations between the way objects appeared in infrared and their colour in the visible spectrum. Once trained, this AI could predict the visible colouring from pure infrared images, even those originally taken in total darkness.
Browne believes the approach could become extremely accurate over time, although the results are already difficult to distinguish from genuine colour images. “I think this technology could be used for precise colour evaluation if the amount and variety of data used to train the neural network is sufficiently large to increase accuracy,”
