Recovering fluorescent spectra with an RGB digital camera and color filters using different matrix factorizations

The aim of a multispectral system is to recover a spectral function at each image pixel, but when a scene is digitally imaged under a light of unknown spectral power distribution (SPD), the image pixels give incomplete information about the spectral reflectances of objects in the scene. We have analyzed how accurately the spectra of artificial fluorescent light sources can be recovered with a digital CCD camera. The red-green-blue (RGB) sensor outputs are modified by the use of successive cutoff color filters. Four algorithms for simplifying the spectra datasets are used: nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF), independent component analysis (ICA), a direct pseudoinverse method, and principal component analysis (PCA). The algorithms are tested using both simulated data and data from a real RGB digital camera. The methods are compared in terms of the minimum rank of factorization and the number of sensors required to derive acceptable spectral and colorimetric SPD estimations; the PCA results are also given for the sake of comparison. The results show that all the algorithms surpass the PCA when a reduced number of sensors is used. The experimental results suggest a significant loss of quality when more than one color filter is used, which agrees with the previous results for reflectances. Nevertheless, an RGB digital camera with or without a prefilter is found to provide good spectral and colorimetric recovery of indoor fluorescent lighting and can be used for color correction without the need of a telespectroradiometer.