Real-time, multi-spectral, color acquisition and display using commodity hardware components

The focus of this paper is on the broad extension of multi-spectral color to both scientist and consumer by creating camera/projector arrays composed of commodity hardware. In contrast to expensive, high-maintainance systems which rely on the physical registration of device spaces, we rely on the virtual alignment of viewing spaces in software where real-time alignment is achieved using the processing capacity of the graphical processing units of consumer PC video cards. Specifically, this paper focuses on the inclusion of real-time, composite pattern, structured light illumination (SLI) as a means of recording the 3D shape of objects, which will then be used for the registration of single-color images taken from multiple view points simultaneously. As such, the described system is able to achieve a cost per unit that scales linearly with the number of color primaries.