Color pattern recognition in white-light joint transform correlation

We first discuss the restriction on the incoherent source and the color filters in a joint transform correlation (JTC) system for white-light color pattern recognition and then report on a novel, to our knowledge, solution of channeling in a white-light JTC system, using a tricolor grating to encode the color patterns in real time. The theoretical analyses and the experimental results show not only that the restriction on the experimental condition is relieved but also that parallel channeling of the power spectra of the encoded pattern is easily performed. In addition, the zero-order power spectrum also forms a useful channel for the shape-only correlation.