Digitally enhanced night vision device

A system for fusing images of a scene received by a plurality of sensors into a displayable colorized image, the system comprising:

• two or more sensors for generating two or more corresponding sets of image data;
• each set of image data comprising an array of datapoints with each datapoint being representative of at least one information factor mapped to a pre-determined area of the scene as received by the sensor;
• an information processor for receiving and sampling the sets of image data to generate corresponding mapped sample data arrays for each set of image data and for computing a fused colorized image array to be displayed from the sample data;
• each sample data array comprising a mapping of datapoints from an image data set mapped to a corresponding datapoint in the related sample data array using a pre-determined function;
• the mapping function being computed by assigning a point along a color vector in a two or more dimensional colorspace to a selected value of the information factor;
• and
• the fused colorized image to be displayed being computed from combining corresponding datapoints from each of the sample data arrays using a pre-selected arithmetic vector function;
• and
• a display for receiving the fused colorized image array and displaying a fused colorized image generated from the fused colorized image array.

A method for fusing images, the method comprising the steps of:

• receiving two or more sets of image data generated by two or more sensors;
• each set of image data comprising an array of datapoints with each datapoint being representative of at least one information factor mapped to a pre-determined area of the scene as received by the sensor;
• sampling the sets of image data to produce corresponding mapped sample data arrays for each set of image data and for use in computing a fused colorized image array to be displayed from the mapped sample data;
• each sample data array comprising a mapping of datapoints from an image data set mapped to a corresponding datapoint in the related sample data array using a pre-determined function;
• the mapping function being computed by assigning a point along a color vector in a two or more dimensional colorspace to a selected value of the information factor;
• computing a fused colorized image array from the sample data arrays by combining corresponding datapoints from each of the sample data arrays using a pre-selected arithmetic vector function;
• and
• displaying a fused colorized image generated from the fused colorized image array.