Multispectral Sensors in Computer Vision

The majority of color work in machine vision has been based on a trichromatic (and specifically RGB) color representation. In reality, color is a continuous univariate function of wavelength which can be quantized into an arbitrary number of dimensions. The capture of reflectance information in spectrally higher dimensions will improve image analysis. To acquire spectrally and spatially highdimensional images, one has to employ specialized image acquisition devices. This paper is a survey of the currently available technologies for this type of imaging systems. Electronically tunable filters offer the fastest, most accurate and flexible color filtering techniques that are currently available. We provide an overview of this type of filters and present a set of criteria for selecting the appropriate device depending on the specific application requirements.