International Business Machines Corporation

Kenneth A Rhrer

Michael J Buehler

Michael N Witlin

Richard J Buratti

Duane A Bresson

Orion E Kline, Iii

Jose Rio

Many sensor information processing applications currently use monochrome B-scan presentations to exhibit processing results from radar, sonar, spectral estimation, seismic profiling, radio astronomy, bio-engineering, and infrared imaging. The use of color for such raster display presentations have been limited to the coding of amplitude values for a fixed set of hue/luminance colors to convey recognition by the human operator. Hue and luminance are used here independently to convey two orthogonal pieces of low signal-to-noise sensor information simultaneously to the operator for quick and accurate recognition. The net result is an added degree of freedom available on a single display surface, which not only improves operator recognition and reaction time for critical events, but precludes the necessity of a second display presentation for the alternate information and subsequent correlation of two data sets by visual comparison. This invention discloses a system to generate and add a new color dimension, a fourth orthogonal axis to the presented data, in addition to position and luminance levels of a video display. The process adds information independent of the usual gray scale as saturated colors on a monotonic wavelength scale from red to green to blue.

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Fairfax Station, VA, United States of America

Kenneth A Rhrer