BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA – Alexander Toet and Maarten Hogervorst of TNO Defence, Security, and Safety have been selected as the 2012 winners of the Rudolf Kingslake Medal and Prize for their paper titled "Progress in color nightvision." The Kingslake Medal is awarded annually to the most noteworthy original paper in Optical Engineering, published by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, and includes a $2,000 honorarium.
The winning paper, published in the January 2012 issue of Optical Engineering, presents an overview of Toet and Hogervorst's progress in achieving both color constancy and computational simplicity by applying a statistical mapping approach in a color look-up-table framework.
"The sample-based color transfer method is specific for different types of materials in a scene and can be easily adapted for the intended operating theatre and the task at hand," Toet and Hogervorst write in the article. The method is highly suitable for real-time implementations, the researchers say.
Tomasz Tkaczyk, chair of the Kingslake Award committee, said committee members were impressed with the rigorous analysis of algorithms and imaging results and the comparison of techniques. "It provides a comprehensive guide of color night vision methods to the optical community," Tkaczyk said.
Toet, a senior researcher at TNO, received his PhD in physics from University of Utrecht in 1987, where he worked on visual spatial localization (hyperacuity) and image processing. At TNO, he investigates multimodal image fusion, image quality, computational models of human visual search and detection, and the quantification of visual target distinctness.
Hogervorst is a research scientist at TNO. His current projects include visual information processing, electro-optical system performance, search and target acquisition modeling, image quality assessment, image enhancement, information fusion, color imaging, EEG, and human factors of camera surveillance systems. He received his PhD in physics from University of Utrecht in 1996 for his work on visual perception.
Ronald Driggers (U.S. Naval Research Lab) is Editor-in-Chief of Optical Engineering. Journal articles are accessible by subscription or per-paper purchase in the SPIE Digital Library, with abstracts open via free access.
SPIE is the international society for optics and photonics, a not-for-profit organization founded in 1955 to advance light-based technologies. The Society serves more than 235,000 constituents from approximately 155 countries, offering conferences, continuing education, books, journals, and a digital library in support of interdisciplinary information exchange, professional networking, and patent precedent. SPIE provided over $3.2 million in support of education and outreach programs in 2012.