Illumination compensation for high-resolution multispectral image mosaicing of heritage paintings

When investigating artworks, having the ability to examine the reflectance spectra at every image pixel can us give insight into the materials and pigments used in its creation. Multispectral imaging is a great tool to perform this task, however, when acquiring images with a multispectral camera, in addition to the reflectance spectra, the surface interaction with the illumination is also captured. This hampers quantitative measurements of the surface. We introduce a novel multispectral imaging system and illumination compensation approach, that mitigates the influence of illumination on image formation. We showcase the performance of our system by producing high-resolution multispectral mosaic images (low or high dynamic range) of artworks dated from the beginning of the XIX-th century, to the present day.