Efficient estimation of reflectance parameters from imaging spectroscopy

In this paper, we address the problem of efficiently recovering reflectance parameters from a single multispectral or hyperspectral image. To do so, we propose a shapelet based estimator that employs shapelets to recover the shading in the image. The optimization setting presented is based upon a three-step process. The first of these concerns the recovery of the surface reflectance and the specular coefficients through a constrained optimization approach. Second, we update the illuminant power spectrum using a simple least-squares formulation. Third, the shading is computed directly once the updated illuminant power spectrum is obtained. This yields a computationally efficient method that achieves speed-ups of nearly an order of magnitude over its closest alternative without compromising performance. We provide results on illuminant power spectrum computation, shading recovery, skin recognition and replacement of the scene illuminant, and object reflectance in real-world images.