A method is proposed for estimating the spectral reflectance function of an object surface by using a six-color scanner. The scanner is regarded as a six-band spectral imaging system, since it captures six color channels in total from two separate scans using two difference lamps. First, we describe the basic characteristics of the imaging systems for a HP color scanner and a multiband camera used for comparison. Second, we describe a computational method for recovering surface-spectral reflectances from the noisy sensor outputs. A LMMSE estimator is presented as an optimal estimator. We discuss the reflectance estimation for non-flat surfaces with shading effect. A solution method is presented for the reliable reflectance estimation. Finally, the performance of the proposed method is examined in detail on experiments using the Macbeth Color Checker and non-flat objects.

Date Published: 19 January 2009
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 7241, Color Imaging XIV: Displaying, Processing, Hardcopy, and Applications, 72410W (19 January 2009); doi: 10.1117/12.805725

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7241:
Color Imaging XIV: Displaying, Processing, Hardcopy, and Applications
Reiner Eschbach; Gabriel G. Marcu; Shoji Tominaga; Alessandro Rizzi, Editor(s)