An LED-based lighting system for acquiring multispectral scenes

The availability of multispectral scene data makes it possible to simulate a complete imaging pipeline for digital cameras, beginning with a physically accurate radiometric description of the original scene followed by optical transformations to irradiance signals, models for sensor transduction, and image processing for display. Certain scenes with animate subjects, e.g., humans, pets, etc., are of particular interest to consumer camera manufacturers because of their ubiquity in common images, and the importance of maintaining colorimetric fidelity for skin. Typical multispectral acquisition methods rely on techniques that use multiple acquisitions of a scene with a number of different optical filters or illuminants. Such schemes require long acquisition times and are best suited for static scenes. In scenes where animate objects are present, movement leads to problems with registration and methods with shorter acquisition times are needed. To address the need for shorter image acquisition times, we developed a multispectral imaging system that captures multiple acquisitions during a rapid sequence of differently colored LED lights. In this paper, we describe the design of the LED-based lighting system and report results of our experiments capturing scenes with human subjects.