Computational Color Constancy using a Stereo Camera

This is the copy of the book chapter originally published in: Gevers, T., Foster, D. H. & Rizzi, A. (ed.) CGIV 2012, 6th European conference on color in graphics,imaging and vision: final program and proceedings. Springfield: The Society for Imaging Science and Technology. Reprinted with permission of IS&T: The Society for Imaging Science and Technology sole copyright owners of CGIV 2012 Final Program and Proceedings.Chromagenic color constancy is one of the promising solutions to the color constancy problem. However, this technique requires two shots of a scene: a conventional RGB image and an additional image that is optically pre-filtered using a chromagenic filter. This severely limits the usefulness of chromagenic based color constancy algorithms to static scenes only. In this paper we propose a solution to this with the use of a digital stereo camera, where we place the chromagenic filter in front of one of the lenses of the stereo camera. This allows capturing two images of a scene, one unfiltered and one filtered, in one shot. An illuminant can then be estimated using chromagenic based illumination estimation methods. Since more and more digital stereo cameras are being commercially available, the system can be built quite easily, and being a one shot solution, it is a practical computational color constancy method that could be useful in many applications. Experiments with a modern commercial digital stereo camera show promising results