A Novel Technique for Modification of Images for Deuteranopic Viewers

Abstract: About 8% of men and 0.5% women in world are affected by the Colour Vision Deficiency. As per the statistics, there are nearly 200 million colour blind people in the world. Color vision deficient people are liable to missing some information that is taken by color. People with complete color blindness can only view things in white, gray and black. Insufficiency of color acuity creates many problems for the color blind people, from daily actions to education. Color vision deficiency, is a condition in which the affected individual cannot differentiate between colors as well as individuals without CVD. Colour vision deficiency, predominantly caused by hereditary reasons, while, in some rare cases, is believed to be acquired by neurological injuries. A colour vision deficient will miss out certain critical information present in the image or video. But with the aid of Image processing, many methods have been developed that can modify the image and thus making it suitable for viewing by the person suffering from CVD. Color adaptation tools modify the colors used in an image to improve the discrimination of colors for individuals with CVD. This paper enlightens some previous research studies in this field and follows the advancement that has occurred over the time. It also approaches different methods of modifying and adjusting images so that the persons suffering from dichromacy are able to better perceive image detail and color dynamics. This paper includes three algorithms; they are LMS daltonization, color contrast enhancement, and LAB color adjustment. Two separate technique are also used for evaluation of the effectiveness of these techniques. First; the simulation of deuteranopia is done on both the original and processed images to observe the algorithm�s effects from the perspective of a color blind viewer. Second; delta E image is obtained between the two images in order to assess the extent to which the image changes from the perspective of a non-color blind viewer and also, the Elapsed time is calculated for the algorithms. A brief comparison is also done between Color contrast enhancement, LAB color adjustment and LMS daltonization.

Keywords: Deuteranopia, Dichromacy, CVD, LMS Daltonization, RGB Color Constrasting, LAB Color Correction, Elapsed time.