Vision-based strategy to reduce the perceived color misregistration of image-capturing devices

Abstract

One of the common artifacts for three-row charge-coupled device (CCD) desktop scanners is color misregistration between the red, green, and blue layers of an image. This causes both color fringing and blur in the resulting scanned images, which we quantify by linear system theory analysis. Knowing the bandwidth and peak sensitivity asymmetries in the opponent color representation of the visual system, we develop a method to reduce the color misregistration artifact by attempting to capture signals in an approximate opponent color space. To facilitate separate capture of the luminance and chrominance signals, we use a new sensor arrangement. The luminance signal (Y) is captured at the full resolution using one row of the three-row CCD linear arrays. The first chrominance signal is captured on another row with a interleaved half resolution red (R) and half resolution luminance sensor elements and the second chrominance signal is similarly captured on a third row using blue (B) and luminance. Since each luminance and chrominance signal is isolated on a single row and since there is no registration error within a row, color misregistration is theoretically prevented in luminance as well as in the chrominance signals. Simulation shows that the new method does reduce blur and the visibility of color fringing. Because residual luminance and chrominance misregistration may occur we conduct a psychophysical experiment to judge the improvement in the scanned image quality. The experiment shows that this new capture scheme can significantly reduce the perception of misregistration artifacts. Finally, we use an image processing model of the visual system to quantify the visible differences due to misregistration and compare these to the psychophysical results.