Use of commercial off-the-shelf digital cameras for scientific data acquisition and scene-specific color calibration

• Main Authors: Treibitz, Tali (Author), Xiao, Bei (Contributor), Gurkan, Umut Atakan (Author), Allen, Justine J. (Author), Demirci, Utkan (Contributor), Hanlon, Roger T. (Author), Akkaynak Yellin, Derya (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Harvard University- (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering (Contributor), Akkaynak, Derya (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Optical Society of America, 2014-01-21T16:13:23Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

 Commercial off-the-shelf digital cameras are inexpensive and easy-to-use instruments that can be used for quantitative scientific data acquisition if images are captured in raw format and processed so that they maintain a linear relationship with scene radiance. Here we describe the image-processing steps required for consistent data acquisition with color cameras. In addition, we present a method for scene-specific color calibration that increases the accuracy of color capture when a scene contains colors that are not well represented in the gamut of a standard color-calibration target. We demonstrate applications of the proposed methodology in the fields of biomedical engineering, artwork photography, perception science, marine biology, and underwater imaging.