Reflectance Measurement Method Based on Sensor Fusion of Frame-Based Hyperspectral Imager and Time-of-Flight Depth Camera

Hyperspectral imaging and distance data have previously been used in aerial, forestry, agricultural, and medical imaging applications. Extracting meaningful information from a combination of different imaging modalities is difficult, as the image sensor fusion requires knowing the optical properties of the sensors, selecting the right optics and finding the sensors' mutual reference frame through calibration. In this research we demonstrate a method for fusing data from Fabry-Perot interferometer hyperspectral camera and a Kinect V2 time-of-flight depth sensing camera. We created an experimental application to demonstrate utilizing the depth augmented hyperspectral data to measure emission angle dependent reflectance from a multi-view inferred point cloud. We determined the intrinsic and extrinsic camera parameters through calibration, used global and local registration algorithms to combine point clouds from different viewpoints, created a dense point cloud and determined the angle dependent reflectances from it. The method could successfully combine the 3D point cloud data and hyperspectral data from different viewpoints of a reference colorchecker board. The point cloud registrations gained 0.29-0.36 fitness for inlier point correspondences and RMSE was approx. 2, which refers a quite reliable registration result. The RMSE of the measured reflectances between the front view and side views of the targets varied between 0.01 and 0.05 on average and the spectral angle between 1.5 and 3.2 degrees. The results suggest that changing emission angle has very small effect on the surface reflectance intensity and spectrum shapes, which was expected with the used colorchecker.

FPI Based Hyperspectral Imager for the Complex Surfaces—Calibration, Illumination and Applications

Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) applications for biomedical imaging and dermatological applications have been recently under research interest. Medical HSI applications are non-invasive methods with high spatial and spectral resolution. HS imaging can be used to delineate malignant tumours, detect invasions, and classify lesion types. Typical challenges of these applications relate to complex skin surfaces, leaving some skin areas unreachable. In this study, we introduce a novel spectral imaging concept and conduct a clinical pre-test, the findings of which can be used to develop the concept towards a clinical application. The SICSURFIS spectral imager concept combines a piezo-actuated Fabry–Pérot interferometer (FPI) based hyperspectral imager, a specially designed LED module and several sizes of stray light protection cones for reaching and adapting to the complex skin surfaces. The imager is designed for the needs of photometric stereo imaging for providing the skin surface models (3D) for each captured wavelength. The captured HS images contained 33 selected wavelengths (ranging from 477 nm to 891 nm), which were captured simultaneously with accordingly selected LEDs and three specific angles of light. The pre-test results show that the data collected with the new SICSURFIS imager enable the use of the spectral and spatial domains with surface model information. The imager can reach complex skin surfaces. Healthy skin, basal cell carcinomas and intradermal nevi lesions were classified and delineated pixel-wise with promising results, but further studies are needed. The results were obtained with a convolutional neural network.

Differentiating Malignant from Benign Pigmented or Non-Pigmented Skin Tumours-A Pilot Study on 3D Hyperspectral Imaging of Complex Skin Surfaces and Convolutional Neural Networks

Several optical imaging techniques have been developed to ease the burden of skin cancer disease on our health care system. Hyperspectral images can be used to identify biological tissues by their diffuse reflected spectra. In this second part of a three-phase pilot study, we used a novel hand-held SICSURFIS Spectral Imager with an adaptable field of view and target-wise selectable wavelength channels to provide detailed spectral and spatial data for lesions on complex surfaces. The hyperspectral images (33 wavelengths, 477–891 nm) provided photometric data through individually controlled illumination modules, enabling convolutional networks to utilise spectral, spatial, and skin-surface models for the analyses. In total, 42 lesions were studied: 7 melanomas, 13 pigmented and 7 intradermal nevi, 10 basal cell carcinomas, and 5 squamous cell carcinomas. All lesions were excised for histological analyses. A pixel-wise analysis provided map-like images and classified pigmented lesions with a sensitivity of 87% and a specificity of 93%, and 79% and 91%, respectively, for non-pigmented lesions. A majority voting analysis, which provided the most probable lesion diagnosis, diagnosed 41 of 42 lesions correctly. This pilot study indicates that our non-invasive hyperspectral imaging system, which involves shape and depth data analysed by convolutional neural networks, is feasible for differentiating between malignant and benign pigmented and non-pigmented skin tumours, even on complex skin surfaces.