White balance in a color imaging device with electrically tunable color filters

A new method for White Balance, which compensates for changes in the illuminant spectrum by changing accordingly the native chromatic reference system, is presented. A set of base color filters is selected in the sensor, accordingly to the scene illuminant, in order to keep the chromatic components of a white object independent from the illuminant. On the contrary, conventional white balance methods do not change the native color space, but change the chromatic coordinates in order to adjust the white vector direction in the same space. The development in the last ten years of CMOS color sensors for digital imaging whose color reconstruction principle is based on the absorption properties of Silicon, rather than on the presence of color filters, makes the new method applicable in a straightforward manner. An implementation of this method with the Transverse Field Detector, a color pixel with electrically tunable spectral responses is discussed. The experimental results show that this method is effective for scene illuminants ranging from the standard D75 to the standard A (i.e. for scene correlated color temperature from 7500 K to 2850 K). The color reconstruction error specific for each set of electrically selected filters, measured in a perceptive color space after the subsequent color correction, doesn't change significantly in the tested tuning interval.