(Optical Society of America, 2014-01-20)
Akkaynak, Derya; Treibitz, Tali; Xiao, Bei; Gurkan, Umut A.; Allen, Justine J.; Demirci, Utkan; Hanlon, Roger T.
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.
