Spectral sensitivity estimation with an uncalibrated diffraction grating

This paper introduces a practical and accurate calibration method for camera spectral sensitivity using a diffraction grating. Accurate calibration of camera spectral sensitivity is crucial for various computer vision tasks, including color correction, illumination estimation, and material analysis. Unlike existing approaches that require specialized narrow-band filters or reference targets with known spectral reflectances, our method only requires an uncalibrated diffraction grating sheet, readily available off-the-shelf. By capturing images of the direct illumination and its diffracted pattern through the grating sheet, our method estimates both the camera’s spectral sensitivity and the diffraction grating parameters in a closed-form manner. Experiments on synthetic and real-world data demonstrate that our approach outperforms reference target-based methods, underscoring its effectiveness and practicality.

In IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV 2025)