Patent ID: 7609291

Claim:
A method for producing an enhanced color image of a scene of interest, said method comprising: electronically capturing a grayscale image of said scene of interest, said grayscale image containing visible and infrared image information; electronically capturing a color image of said scene of interest by using an infrared filter for blocking infrared light, whereby said color image contains visible image information and precludes infrared image information; and combining grayscale information derived from the visible and the infrared image information contained in said grayscale image, with the visible image information from said color image to produce said enhanced color image of said scene of interest, wherein said combining comprises using a grayscale value of a first pixel in the grayscale image to modify the red, green, blue (RGB) values of a corresponding pixel in said color image, the modification of the RGB values being carried out without modifying the RGB color ratio of said corresponding pixel.