Multispectral image fusion for the small aircraft transportation system

Flight operations in poor visibility conditions are implicated in many accidents, including controlled flight into terrain incidents, thunderstorm encounters enroute, runway incursions and collisions during taxi operations. General aviation has no low-cost enhanced vision technology readily available to provide pilots a view of their surroundings at night or in haze. Fusion of thermal-based systems and reflectivity-based systems (such as back-thinned charge-coupled device cameras) promises to improve pilots´ situation awareness by providing pilots with extended information about their surroundings. We investigated both pseudocolor and gray scale intensity fusion techniques using infrared images of airport scenes and visible light images from a black and white camera. Individual image enhancements, such as edge enhancements, were also evaluated. Evaluations were performed on fused captured images produced by programming the techniques on a personal computer.