IMAGE RECOLORIZATION FOR THE COLORBLIND

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new re-coloring algorithm to enhance the accessibility for the color vision deficient (or colorblind). Compared to people with normal color vision, people with color vision deficiency (CVD) have difficulty in distinguishing between certain combinations of colors. This may hinder visual communication owing to the increasing use of colors in recent years. To address this problem, we re-color the image to preserve visual detail when perceived by people with CVD. We first extract the representing colors in an image. Then we find the optimal mapping to maintain the contrast between each pair of these representing colors. The proposed algorithm is image content dependent and completely automatic. Experimental results on natural images are illustrated to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed re-coloring algorithm.