Image processing for colour blindness correction

Abstract

Colour blindness is a genetic mutation that alters the colour vision of the subjects by decreasing the sensitivity to certain colour wavelengths, depending on the defect. There are many forms of colour blindness ranging from monochromacy (black-white) to the most common form, the ¿red-green¿ variation where reds or greens are weakened, the vibrant shades are easily seen and the dull shades are difficult to perceive. A filter was designed based on the Ishihara colour tests in order to correct the colour blind deficiencies. This was successful for seeing the hidden objects within the test plates but did not translate well for real world images. The filter was modified, removing the dullest/lightest shades and shifting all the shades to the darker vibrant shades. The original image was shown to colour blind and normal vision subjects with results varying among all the subjects. After the modified filter was applied to a natural image, the colour blind and normal vision subjects were all able to correctly identify the test colours.