Technology Options for Multi-Spectral Infrared Cameras

摘要

Use of multispectral capability in imaging devices provide us with spectral characteristics of the objects being viewed. This helps in "recognizing" the object with- out any knowledge of the geometry or shape of the desired target. Until recently, multispectral images were obtained using multiple filters placed in front of the imaging devices or by using prism based beam-splitting technologies. With the advent of Digital Still Color Cameras, a whole new field of imaging has emerged, which consists of a monolithic array of color filters overlaid on a CCD array such that each pixel samples one spectral band. The resulting mosaic of spectral samples is processed to produce a high resolution color image where the values of the spectral bands not sampled at a certain location are estimated from its neighbors. This process is often referred to as demosaicking. This paper proposes the use of this technology as a general imaging modality for robust robot vision and compares several do mosaicking algorithms.