An algorithm to determine the chromaticity under non-uniform illuminant

Abstract

Colour based object recognition is a difficult problem because of the effect of scene illuminant and geometry on the captured image. In this paper the ability of an algorithm proposed by Finlayson and Drew [1] to separate similar colours is assessed. A new variant of this algorithm is then proposed that results in a slight improvement in performance. A significant performance improvement is achieved by optimising the characteristics of the sensors that are used to acquire the data for this algorithm. This optimisation process results in several combinations of sensors and associated data projections that have a comparable performance when required to distinguish between similar colours. Since this performance is comparable to that of the human visual system it is suggested that with the correct sensors this algorithm is capable of obtaining useful chromaticity information under varying illumination conditions. © 2008 Springer-Verlag.