Color image acquisition by charge-coupled device cameras in polychromatic pattern recognition

The influence of the image acquisition by a color CCD camera in color pattern recognition is studied. Two different types of cameras are used: a camera with a single CCD element and color filters (1CCD camera), and a camera with dichroic mirrors and three CCD elements (3CCD camera). Two problems are considered: in the first problem, both the target and the scene are captured by the camera; in the second problem, only the scene is captured by the camera and the target is computer generated. A wide range of gain/offset values are used for image acquisition and pattern recognition results are obtained by computer simulation. The results reveal that the 3CCD camera is much more suitable than the 1CCD camera for pattern recognition purposes.