Figures of merit for color scanners

In the design and evaluation of color scanners and cameras, it is useful to have a single figure of merit that closely agrees with perceived color accuracy. In the past, several measures of goodness for color scanning filters have been proposed to fulfil such a requirement. Most of the proposed measures have had shortcomings in that they are either based on error metrics in color spaces that are not perceptually uniform, or in that they do not take into account the effects of measurement noise. An extension of the most promising measure, based on linearized CIELAB space, is proposed to obtain a new figure of merit that has a high degree of perceptual relevance and also accounts for the varying noise performance of different filters. The paper also provides a common framework for the different figures of merit and a comprehensive comparison of their computational complexity and reliability.