Evaluation and comparison of multispectral imaging systems

Abstract

Multispectral imaging, which extends the number of imaging channels beyond the conventional three, has demonstrated to be beneficial for a wide range of applications. Its ability of acquiring images beyond the visible range and applicability in many different application domains lead to the design and the development of a number of multispectral imaging technologies and systems. Given different systems to choose from, it is important to be able to compare them in a general and in many situations specific to a certain application of interest. In this paper, we evaluate several conventional and recently proposed multispectral imaging systems, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Both spectral and colorimetric accuracies are used as the criteria in the quantitative evaluation. The systems are evaluated and compared for two specific applications: imaging of natural scenes and paintings (cultural heritage), as well as for a general spectral imaging solution. This work provides a framework for the evaluation and comparison of different multispectral imaging systems, which we believe, would be very helpful in identifying the most appropriate technique or system for a given application.