Ev2Gray: Generating Intensity Images from Event Streams

Event-based vision sensors surpass traditional frame-based cameras for capturing dynamic changes, yet they struggle with static regions and lack absolute intensity information, limiting scene understanding. This work addresses that by generating absolute intensity images without a secondary camera. The key idea is a moving opaque strip that traverses the field of view, deliberately occluding and then revealing parts of the scene. Since the occlusion intensity is identical for all pixels, it provides a universal reference point. By counting positive and negative events during occlusion and revelation, the method yields a relative intensity value with respect to the occlusion-level brightness—even in otherwise static regions. By producing meaningful grayscale images while preserving the advantages of event-based sensors and introducing minimal disturbance through brief, localized occlusion, our method bridges the gap between relative event output and absolute intensity information, thereby enabling broader applications for event-based vision systems.