A Night to Behold: Researchers Use Deep Learning to Bring Color to Night Vision

A team of scientists has used GPU-accelerated deep learning to show how color can be brought to night-vision systems. In a paper published this week in the journal PLOS One, a team of researchers at the University of California, Irvine led by Professor Pierre Baldi and Dr. Andrew Browne, describes how they reconstructed color images of photos of faces using an infrared camera. The study is a step toward predicting and reconstructing what humans would see using cameras that collect light using imperceptible near-infrared illumination. The study's authors explain that humans see light in the so-called "visible spectrum," or light with wavelengths of between 400 and 700 nanometers. Typical night vision systems rely on cameras that collect infrared light outside this spectrum that we can't see.