A method for computing spectral reflectance (Q1088614)

Psychophysical experiments show that the perceived colour of an object is relatively independent of the spectrum of the incident illumination and mainly depends on the surface spectral reflectance. We first demonstrate a possible solution to this undetermined problem for a Mondrian world of flat rectangular patches. We expand the illumination and surface reflectances in terms of a finite number of basis functions. We assumed that the number of colour receptors is greater than the number of basis functions. This yields a set of nonlinear equations for each colour patch. Number counting arguments show that, given a sufficient number of surface patches with the same illumnation, there are enough equations to determine the surface reflectances up to an overall scaling factor.