Patent ID: 8503778

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for enhancing the visual quality of a visible light image using its corresponding near infra-red image, the method comprising: computing a weighted region mask from the visible light image, the weighted region mask indicating areas of the visible light image to be enhanced and the extent of enhancement; wavelet transforming the visible light image and the near infra-red image into a plurality of low frequency and high frequency subbands; computing a contrast transferred subband from the low frequency subband of the visible light image and the low frequency subband of the near infra-red image guided by the weighted region mask; computing texture transferred subbands from the high frequency subbands of the visible light image and the high frequency subbands of the near infra-red image guided by the weighted region mask; and generating a quality enhanced visible light image from the contrast transferred subband and the texture transferred subbands.