Improvement over SeekFusion - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Alex VE3NEA
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: August 22, 2019, 04:25:41 am
content: The SeekShot and SeekShotPro thermal cameras have the SeekFusion function that combines the visible and thermal images into a single picture that supposedly preserves the sharp detail of the visual component and adds temperature information from the thermal image. It looks like their fusion algorithm is just a weighted sum of the two images. The first image below, that I found on the Web, is an example of this function's work: it shows the two input images and the result of their fusion.The weighted sum approach works, but better results could be obtained by performing the fusion in the HCL color space (Hue, Chroma, Luminance). I have written a small program that performs such fusion. It uses the visual image, converted to gray scale, as Luminance, thermal data (also gray scale) as Hue, and sets Chroma (a.k.a. saturation) to a constant value between 20% and 100%. The second image below is produced using this program from the same input as the SeekFusion image. I just had to recover gray-scale thermal data (the third image below) from the pseudo-color picture.Those who want to play with this algorithm can download the program, or clone the source code, here:https://github.com/VE3NEA/HclFusion.One way to obtain the images for the experiments is by using SeekCompact (Pro) with theFull FrameandThermal+modes enabled, and theStore All Thermal Dataoption turned on in the settings. When a picture is taken in this mode, three files are created: a visual image, a pseudo-color jpeg, and a tiff file that contains both pseudo-color and gray-scale thermal data. Use the visual and the tiff files for fusion.

author: bap2703
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 22, 2019, 06:19:35 am
content: Nice.You should try with a different LUT for the thermal data: one that doesn't map over the whole color range because it gives a toyish look.Try the standard flir black/purple/yellow/white palette.

author: Alex VE3NEA
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: August 23, 2019, 03:58:58 am
content: Here is another pair of visual and thermal images, from the Seek Thermal web site, and their HCL fusion:

author: Vipitis
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2019, 07:46:31 pm
content: I do love the idea of mixing down hyperspectral images. It interests me on an academic level. Instead of just adding them, a HSL mix is interested. Though you mix down and RGB image to s single Y. Using the visible image for luminance is great as luminance holds he most detail and would work as an image alone. We are used to RGB colors and all our screens are basically tricolor. As you only use two dimensions you have to calculate the third in between them be it RGB, HSL or YUV. It would be interesting to deconstruct the visible image in a different way, keeping Saturation as a value but using the Hue fromThermal palette only.I might experirment with this on my own, but would need to find a good data set with various scenes. The second one your provided works really well.High end military imaging systems are dual channels IR. They combine MWIR and LWIR. We enthusiast have to go through some trouble to make it happen, but it would be an interesting aspect to tackle for mixing it all down for a trichannel monitor.Parallax remains an issue.