SICE Annual Conference 2008 August 20-22, 2008, The University Electro-Communications, Japan

A Color Compensation Vision System for Color-blind People

Tomoyuki Ohkubo1 and Kazuyuki Kobayashi2 1 Graduate School of Engineering, Hosei University, Tokyo, Japan (Tel: +81-423-87-6260; E-mail: ohkubo@ikko-lab.k.hosei.ac.jp) 2 Faculty of Engineering Hosei University, Tokyo, Japan (Tel: +81-423-87-6267; E-mail: ikko@k.hosei.ac.jp)

Abstract: In this paper, we propose a color compensation vision system for color-blind people. About 8% of males and less than 1% of females have faulty color perception from birth. The degree to which a person may possess abnormal color vision ranges from slight difficulty in recognizing shades of color to total loss of color vision. Most types of defective color blindness can be classified into two categories: green color defective and red color defective. The population with the blue color defective type is less than 1%. Thus we mainly focus on a color vision compensation system that enables color-blind people to see the colors of green and red. In order to compensate image color for color-blind people, the image in RGB color space is converted to HLS color space which enables the defective color range to be easily avoided. The validity of the proposed method is confirmed by the developed camera and display color compensation system. Keywords: image processing, color-blind people,

1. INTRODUCTION
Color plays an important role in daily life as a fundamental visual feature that gives richness to the world. Color may seem to be only for decoration, but it is frequently used as the primary means of informing people how to interpret information. Color works well for most people, but about 8% of males and less than 1% of females have faulty color perception from birth. To prepare for the coming barrier-free society, we need to take into account people who have faulty color perception. According to statistics on types of color blindness, the main types are red defective and green defective. Thus we mainly focus on a vision compensation system that enables color-blind people to see green and red colors. In order to compensate color for color-blind people, we developed a color compensation vision system. In this system, the captured image in RGB color space is converted to HLS color space which enables the defective color range to be easily avoided. The validity of proposed method is confirmed by the developed camera and display color compensation system.

Red

Photo 1 Stop color of a traffic signal Photo 2 shows a simulated image of the red-green defective type of color blindness by using the color simulation software called Toyo Ink: UDing. As shown, it is difficult to distinguish the red color.

Dark yellow

2. DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM

A major problem for color-blind people is recognizing traffic signals. Because red is commonly used for cautions and warnings, depending on the background color of the traffic signal, color-blind people may not be able to recognize the color difference. Photo 2 Appearance of traffic signal to color-blind people

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In this study, we examined the following problems: How to make the color of red visible? How to evaluate the system?

3. PROPOSED COLOR VISION ASSIST SYSTEM

Figure 1 shows a schematic diagram of the proposed color vision assist system. Inherent color blindness is caused by the base array of the opsin gene on the chromosome. One approach to assist color-blind people is an eye-glass color conversion display system to enhance color difference, for which we developed a color compensation algorithm. The developed system consists of a small camera, image processing unit and wearable display which can monitor real-time like a single eye-glass. The captured image in RGB color space can be converted to HLS color space to enhance color difference depending on the defective color type. Figure 2 shows the relation of HLS color visible area for a normal person and a defective color person. For the defective area in HLS color space, we transform the defective color space to visible color space by:
H' H / 360 270 45

Fig. 3 View of wearing the system We applied the developed color assist system to the r ealistic situation of a recognizing the traffic signal show n in Photo 1. Photo 3 shows the transformed color image for a redgreen defective type person which is also displayed on t he HMD in the developed system.

3. EXPERIMENTS

(1)

Magenta

We use Data Glass 2 (Shimadzu Corporation) which is a head mounted display (HMD) for wearable computers. The transformed image is displayed on the HMD in real-time.

CCD

PC

HMD
Photo 3 After image processing

Convert to HLS color space

Image processing

Convert to RGB color space

Photo 4 shows a simulated transformed color image that a red-green defective type person can recognize.

Fig. 1 Block diagram of system

Blue

Fig. 2 Color conversion model in HLS color space

Photo 4 Appearance of photo 3 for a person with red-green color vision In Photo 4, the rightmost light appears to be on.

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4. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

It is not easy to imagine which color combinations are confusing for individuals affected by color vision deficiency. The Variantor is designed for people with normal color vision. The Variantor color vision deficiency simulation eye-glass is used to emulate the same colors as perceived by a color-blind person. 4.1 Evaluation of SD method In this study, we used the semantic differential method (SD method) to obtain Kansei data. Seventeen Kansei words are selected in the SD method, as shown in Table 1. These words are classified into perceptual words, image words and evaluation words, which are components of the hierarchy structural model. The evaluation was obtained from ten subjects. Each subject was a male student in his early twenties. Table 1 Terminology for assessment Easy to see Hard to see (MIYASUI) (MINIKUI) Not irritated Irritated (IRAIRA SHINAI) (IRAIRA SURU) Clear Vague (HAKKIRI SHITA) (BONYARI SHITA) Strong Weak (TSUYOI) (YOWAI) Beautiful Ugly (UTSUKUSHII) (KITANAI) Bright Dark (AKARUI) (KURAI) Not tired Tired (TSUKARENAI) (TSUKARERU) Sharp Dull (SURUDOI) (NIBUI) Clear Dirty (SUNDA) (NIGOTTA) Not flickering Flickering (CHIRATSUKANAI) (CHIRATSUKU) Standing out Not standing out (UKIDETA) (SHIZUNDA) Conspicuous Inconspicuous (MEDATSU) (MEDATANAI) Not glaring Glaring (GIRAGIRA SHINAI) (GIRAGIRA SURU) Comfortable Uncomfortable (OCHITSUKU) (UWATSUITA) Warm Cool (ATATAKAI) (SUZUSHII) Not spread Spread (NIJIMANAI) (NIJIMU) Vivid Quiet (AZAYAKA) (JIMI)

4.2 Evaluation of normal person and color-blind person In order to compare viewing between normal people and color-blind people, we used Variantor to simulate the view of color-blind people for evaluation consistency. Figure 4 shows the experimental setup for the evaluations. The evaluations were carried out by viewing traffic signals.
Normal person

Traffic signal Defective color view Simulation eye-glass

Color-blind person

Fig. 4 Traffic viewing tests case 1 To evaluate the traffic viewing test, we apply SD profile method which is shown in Figure 5. The result of this research has the good result of a normal person. However, the person who wearied the simulation glass has brought a bad result. This is because the red signal is changing, as the experiment showed.

normal person simulated person Fig. 5 SD profiles of case 1

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4.3 Evaluations with proposed color vision assist system According to the raw vision evaluation results, we examined our proposed color vision assist system. Figure 6 shows the configuration used to evaluate our system. The difference between previous experiments is whether our proposed system is used or not.
Normal person CCD

The SD profile indicates that the evaluation results are almost the same with or without Variantor. The proposed color vision assist system thus converts color vision consistently, regardless of normal and/or defective color, confirming the validity of our system.

5. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we proposed a color compensation vision system for color-blind people. We confirmed its validity by using a camera with the display color compensation system.

HMD Traffic signal CCD

REFERENCES
[1] S. Muramatsu, Image & video signal processing with MATLAB, CQ Pub., 2007. [2] Toyo Ink: Universal Design, http://www.toyoink.co.jp/ud/index.html. [3] Seuttgi Ymg and Yong Man Ro, Visual contents adaptation for color vision deficiency, Proc. of ICIP 2003, Vol. 1, pp. I-453-456, 2003. [4] Yau-Hwang Kuo and Jang-Pong Hsu, MCFC-R: a fuzzy connectionist model for color-blindness plate recognition, Proc of ICNN96, Vol. 2, pp. 718-723, 1996.

HMD Simulation eye-glass

Color-blind person

Fig. 6 Traffic viewing tests case 2 The results of this research were converted into an SD profile as shown below.

normal person simulated person Fig. 7 SD profiles of case 2

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