Datacolor Inc.

Datacolor Holding Ag

Zhiling Xu

Michael H Brill

Taeyoung Park

Hong Wei

Venkata R Thumu

Nilesh B Dhote

Kathleen A Edwards

William Bishop

David Williams

Seaver Li

William Binder

Bill Binder

A method includes controlling a gloss channel of a color measurement apparatus to measure a surface gloss of a color sample to generate a gloss value for the color sample. A color channel of the color measurement apparatus is controlled to measure a reflectance spectrum of the color sample to generate a first plurality of reflectance values for the color sample under a first measurement geometry. The first plurality of reflectance values are converted to a second plurality of reflectance values representing the reflectance spectrum of the color sample under a second measurement geometry, different from the first measurement geometry. The converting utilizes an adjustment that is a function of the gloss value.

Method and apparatus for measuring surface gloss and spectral reflectance

A method has been developed to monitor the aging of an illuminator (such as a lamp) and the interior sphere wall in a sphere-based color measurement instrument. This monitoring process or method is configurable to independently monitor the aging of the illuminator as well as the aging of the interior surface of a color measurement device using standard calibration measurements already present in the color measurement device.

Instrument monitoring

In the disclosure provided herein, the described apparatus, systems and methods are directed to compensation of errors caused by the difference between the specular port and the sphere in a sphere-based color-measurement instrument, and improvement of the performance of the instrument. In one or more implementations, described approaches eliminate the need for hardware replacement, and therefore reduce costs associated with the operation of color measurement instruments.

Instrument monitoring and correction

In accordance with one or more implementations of the apparatus, system and methods described, a sample measurement device is provided that is configured to measure the color of a sample. The sample measurement device includes at least one light source configured to illuminate the sample; at least one light sensor configured to output a signal in response to light emitted by light source and reflected off the sample being received by at least a portion of the light sensor; and a processor configured to receive the signal and calculate a color value for the sample, the processor configured to calculate the color value by at least adjusting the signal using a calibration factor.

Compensate surface gloss in spectrum recovery

A system including a processor and a memory configured to store code executed by the processor is provided. In one or more implementations, the processor is configured by the code to calibrate measurements made by color measurement devices. In one particular implementation, the processor receives a measurement dataset of one or more color values, for a sample obtained by a color measurement device. The processor is configured to convert the measurement dataset to a standard space measurement dataset using a standard space measurement model and calculate a color dataset based on the standard space measurement dataset using a color conversion model. The processor is further configured to output the calculated color dataset to at least one of a display, database or local memory store.

System and method to calibrate color measurement devices

A method has been developed to improve the stability of a color measurement system that measures reflectances using matrix-transformation method. The transformation matrix can be obtained by training with a raw measurement matrix and a master reflectance matrix. The raw measurement matrix can be stacked with one or more of its variations, with each variation being some random noise added onto a part or the whole original raw signal matrix. The same number of master reflectance matrices are also stacked to match the size and sample ordering of the raw measurement matrix. The resulting transformation matrix will be more stable and less sensitive to the measurement noise.

Spectrum recovery in a sample

By way of overview and introduction, various embodiments of the apparatus, systems and methods described herein are directed improved approaches to aligning and standardizing different total spectral radiance factor shapes measured with different instruments. Furthermore, in one or more configurations and approaches, the disclosure presented herein is directed to obtaining a whiteness calibration value for use in sample measurements without the need of UV filter adjustments.

System and method to standardize whiteness calibration and measurement

Embodiments of the present invention are directed towards systems, methods and computer program products for correcting inter-instrumentation variation among color measurement devices. In one particular implementation, a method for correcting inter-instrument variation among color measurement devices includes obtaining a set of color measurements of an item under analysis. The described approach also includes accessing a conversion model, wherein the conversion module has been generated using one or more ANN back propagated over a collection of data points, where the data points correspond to measurements of a color standard using devices from a control device batch and a test device batch. Using the conversion module, a processor is configured to transform the set of color measurements into a calibrated color measurement set. The calibrated color measurement set is then output to at least one display, memory or remote computing device.

Inter-instrument variation correction

In accordance with particular implementations of the invention described herein, a sample for analysis is illuminated under each of one or more narrow-band light sources. The light incident upon this sample is received by a sensor that generates measurement data in response thereto. One or more processors are configured to receive the measurement data and derive an excitation response curve and a fluorescent response curve from the measurement data. The processor is further configured to generate a fluorescent profile value using measurements from the fluorescent response curve for each of the captured narrow band measurement data and an excitation profile value corresponding to the area under the fluorescence curve divided by the area under the excitation curve. The generated fluorescent profile and excitation profile are both output as a dataset providing improved measurement values over similar approaches in the art.

Fluorescence measurement of samples

A method and a system are provided for obtaining improved spectra recovery results of a measurement of a sample through the use of a calibration matrix obtained from calibration measurement values using at least one illumination source. By calculating the reflectance spectrum of a collection of calibration samples across several rounds of measurements and cascading the results, an improved calibration matrix can be used to convert the sample measurement values to more accurate results.

A method is provided for identifying colors across illuminants using a processor configured by code executing therein, the method comprising capturing a sample image with an image recording device, the image including pixels resenting a color sample under analysis and a color reference chart. The processor is also configured to execute comparing the color values of pixels representing the color reference chart of the sample image to the pixel values corresponding to a plurality of entries within a plurality of color reference datasets to determine the color reference having the closest match of sample captured in the image. The reference identifier of the color that is the closest match to the sample is then output for further use.

Color search using a smartphone and a reference color chart

In one example, an initial transform is stored for converting wavelength channel responses of a color measurement instrument to color readings. The initial transform is set in-factory by a manufacturer of the color measurement device. A color selection of a sample is subsequently retrieved from a database, where the color selection was made by an end user in response to a color reading by the color measurement instrument using the initial transform. An adjustment to the initial transform is calculated using the color selection. The adjustment is then sent to the color measurement instrument for use in making future color measurements.

Re-calibrating color measurement instruments based on user-made color selections

A method is provided for identifying colors across illuminants using a processor configured by code executing therein, the method comprising capturing a sample image with an image recording device, the image including pixels representing a color sample under analysis and a color reference chart. The processor is also configured to execute comparing the color values of pixels representing the color reference chart of the sample image to the pixel values corresponding to a plurality of entries within a plurality of color reference datasets to determine the dataset representing the closest match of the illumination present at the time the sample image was captured. Using the identified illuminant, the color reference dataset having the closest illuminant is searched for the color under analysis.

Color identification in images

Various embodiments of the systems and methods described herein are directed towards training an artificial neural network to identify color values of a sample by providing image data obtained through multiple image capture devices under a plurality of lighting conditions. The present invention also includes using a pre-trained neural network to identify the color values of a sample having an unknown color value by capturing an image of an unknown color sample and known color reference samples under any illumination or hardware configuration.

Multi-agent training of a color identification neural network

A color measurement system is provided that includes an integrating sphere having at least one specular component included (SCI) sensor configured to output a signal in response to light incident thereupon and at least one specular component excluded (SCE) sensor configured to output a signal in response to light incident thereupon, a sample port, a SCE port, a light source configured to direct a beam of light into the sphere and provide illumination at the sample port and a specular component excluded port. The system also includes a processor having a memory and configured by code to activate the light source so as to cause a beam of light to be directed into the sphere and provide illumination to the sample port. The processor is also configured to receive a signal output by the SCI sensor and a signal output by the SCE sensor. Furthermore, the processor is configured to obtain at least one measurement coefficient value and generate a corrected SCE measurement value using at least the SCI sensor value, the SCE sensor value and the obtained measurement coefficient. The processor is configured to output at least the corrected SCE measurement value and the SCI measurement value.

Growing community of inventors

West Windsor, NJ, United States of America

Zhiling Xu