Color discrimination enhancement for dichromats using self-organizing color transformation

Color deficient persons, especially dichromats, have difficulty in discriminating certain kinds of colors. To help dichromats discriminate colors better, a color transformation method is proposed. The method utilizes the redundancy of color information, changing the colors of a scene into discernable ones for dichromats. The self-organizing map (SOM) algorithm is used to build a nonlinear color map, maintaining the neighboring relations between colors. Results of both subjective observation and quantitative evaluation show that the method can effectively enhance the color discrimination for dichromats. This study provides a new approach to rectify color vision deficiency. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.