Evaluation of the Colorimetric Performance of Single-Sensor Image Acquisition Systems Employing Colour and Multispectral Filter Array

Single-sensor colour imaging systems mostly employ a colour filter array (CFA). This enables the acquisition of a colour image by a single sensor at one exposure at the cost of reduced spatial resolution. The idea of CFA fit itself well with multispectral purposes by incorporating more than three types of filters into the array which results in multispectral filter array (MSFA). In comparison with a CFA, an MSFA trades spatial resolution for spectral resolution. A simulation was performed to evaluate the colorimetric performance of such CFA/MSFA imaging systems and investigate the trade-off between spatial resolution and spectral resolution by comparing CFA and MSFA systems utilising various filter characteristics and demosaicking methods including intraand inter-channel bilinear interpolation as well as discrete wavelet transformed based techniques. In general, 4-band and 8-band MSFAs provide better or comparable performance than the CFA setup in terms of CIEDE2000 and S-CIELAB colour difference. This indicates that MSFA would be favourable for colorimetric purposes.