Patent ID: 7529004

Claim:
A lighting reproduction apparatus for illuminating a subject while achieving metameric illuminant matching (MIM) so that the illuminated subject, when observed by an optical imaging system, substantially appears to be illuminated by a desired illuminant having a known spectral power distribution, the apparatus comprising: an optical source configured to generate light that illuminates the subject, the optical source comprising a plurality of light emitters, each light emitter characterized by an individual color channel having an associated spectral power distribution; an optical imaging system configured to detect light that is reflected from the subject illuminated with the light from the optical source, and to generate therefrom image data representative of the intensity of the detected light according to at least one a spectral response function, each spectral response function corresponding to one color channel of the optical imaging system; and a driver configured to drive the individual color channels of each light emitter with non-negative channel intensity values at which a substantial match is achieved between the imaging system response of the emitted light, and the predicted imaging system response of the desired illuminant, the driver comprising a channel intensity determiner configured to compute the non-negative channel intensity values, the channel intensity determiner including a data processor configured to input and store the image data, and illuminant observation data representative of the known spectral power distribution of the desired illuminant as observed by the optical imaging system.