Multichannel vision system for estimating surface and illumination functions

This paper describes a set of experimental measurements and theoretical calculations designed to recover both the surface-spectral reflectance function and the illuminant spectral-power distribution from the image data. A multichannel vision system comprising six color channels was created with the use of a monochrome CCD camera and color filters. The spectral sensitivity of each color channel is calibrated, and the dynamic range of the camera is extended for sensing a wide range of intensity levels. Three algorithms and the corresponding results are introduced. First, a method of choosing the appropriate dimension of the linear model dimensions is introduced. Second, the illuminant parameters are estimated from the sensor measurements made at multiple points within separate objects. Third, the sensor responses are corrected for highlight and shading variations. The body reflectance parameters, unique to each surface, are recovered from these corrected values. Experimental results with a small number of test surfaces and a simple illumination geometry demonstrate that the illuminant spectrum and the surface-spectral reflectance functions can be recovered to within typical deviations of 1% and 4%, respectively. (C) 1996 Optical Society of America.