Reconstruction of reflectance spectra using weighted principal component analysis

The weighted principal component analysis technique is employed for reconstruction of reflectance spectra of surface colors from the related tristimulus values. A dynamic eigenvector subspace based on applying certain weights to reflectance data of Munsell color chips has been formed for each particular sample and the color difference value between the target, and Munsell dataset is chosen as a criterion for determination of weighting factors. Implementation of this method enables one to increase the influence of samples which are closer to target on extracted principal eigenvectors and subsequently diminish the effect of those samples which benefit from higher amount of color difference. The performance of the suggested method is evaluated in spectral reflectance reconstruction of three different collections of colored samples by the use of the first three Munsell bases. The resulting spectra show considerable improvements in terms of root mean square error between the actual and reconstructed reflectance curves as well as CIELAB color difference under illuminant A in comparison to those obtained from the standard PCA method. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 33, 360–371, 2008