Radiometric and spectral calibration are essential for enabling the use of digital sensors for measurement purposes. Traditional optical calibration techniques require expensive equipment such as specialized light sources, monochromators, tunable filters, calibrated photo-diodes, etc. The trade-offs between computational and physics-based characterization schemes are, however, not well understood. In this paper we perform an analysis of existing computational calibration schemes and elucidate their weak points. We highlight the limitations by comparing against ground truth measurements performed in an optical characterization laboratory (EMVA 1288 standard). Based on our analysis, we present accurate and affordable methods for the radiometric and spectral calibration of a camera.

Date Published: 29 April 2016
PDF: 14 pages
Proc. SPIE 9896, Optics, Photonics and Digital Technologies for Imaging Applications IV, 98960O (29 April 2016); doi: 10.1117/12.2228071

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9896:
Optics, Photonics and Digital Technologies for Imaging Applications IV
Peter Schelkens; Touradj Ebrahimi; Gabriel Cristóbal; Frédéric Truchetet; Pasi Saarikko, Editor(s)