Effective Sound-Vision Substitution System Guided by Salient Regions

Abstract

Auditory visual substitution systems aim to provide mobility assistance for visually disabled persons by exploiting the auditory augmentation. Many of the existing systems process commonly standard grayscale images that practically discharge the color information. However, color plays a significant role in the scene interpretation that also needs to be considered for realistic perception of the scene. In this paper we present an auditory-vision substitution framework that is concerned to explore effectively the chromatic information. Our technique improves the perception of complex scenes by better preserving the initial color saliency after image decolorization step. Therefore the visual salient regions remain noticeable also in the translated sound patterns. This adaptation is essential in order to enhance the perception over the interpreted images and to reliably guide visually disabled persons. The results demonstrate the utility of our system in comparison with similar substitution systems.