Imaging using colors

The human visual system can distinguish thousands of varying color shades and intensities but only around 100 shades of gray. Therefore, in an image, a great deal of extra information is contained in the form of color. The extra information can be used to simplify image analysis such as object identification and extraction. Color sensation scattered from liquid crystals covering a surface is generated by a number of factors. These include the orientation of the crystals over the surface, the spectral characteristics of light used for illumination, and the spectral response of the color-sensing detector which could be a human eye or an imaging sensor in a color camera. The procedure for recording color images from a surface covered with liquid crystals using a color camera connected to a computer is discussed here.