Multispectral image encoding

The shortcomings of the conventional three-channel imaging are rooted in metamerism problems. To avoid these problems multispectral imaging is introduced as an complementary approach. This imaging technology uses the complete spectral information of the original image, and, hence, avoids the problems due to metamerism. A multispectral image requires much more data than the same image using conventional technology (e.g. 31 sample values instead of 3 colorimetric values, corresponding to a data enlargement factor of about 10). Efficient multispectral image encoding has therefore been developed. Furthermore, this multispectral image encoding is compatible to conventional image encoding. The multispectral image encoding is based on the decomposition of the spectral data into three conventional components (e.g. RGB) and additional metameric components. Using this approach, the data enlargement factor can be reduced to values between 2 and 3.