Full-color night vision is almost a reality after a deep learning breakthrough

The monochromatic black-and-green that defined night vision for decades is quickly receding into the past. The U.S. military already issues night-vision goggles that outline people and other objects in bright white, and researchers across the world are racing to develop even more advanced ways of seeing in the dark. A new proof-of-principle study offers intriguing hints about how the next generation of such technology might work. In a paper published Wednesday in the academic journal PLOS ONE, researchers demonstrate that a deep learning algorithm can build a full-color reconstruction of a scene using only infrared images the human eye can't see. These findings suggest an exciting new future for night-vision technology.