A Single Sensor Based Multispectral Imaging Camera using a Narrow Spectral Band Colour Mosaic Integrated on the Monochrome CMOS Image Sensor

Abstract: A multispectral image camera captures image data within specific wavelength ranges in narrow wavelength bands across the electromagnetic spectrum. Images from a multispectral camera can extract additional information that the human eye or a normal camera fails to capture and thus may have important applications in precision agriculture, forestry, medicine and object identification. Conventional multispectral cameras are made up of multiple image sensors each fitted with a narrow passband wavelength filter and optics, which makes them heavy, bulky, power hungry and very expensive. The multiple optics also create image co-registration problem. Here, we demonstrate a single sensor based three band multispectral camera using a narrow spectral band RGB colour mosaic in a Bayer pattern integrated on a monochrome CMOS sensor. The narrow band colour mosaic is made of a hybrid combination of plasmonic colour filters and heterostructured dielectric multilayer. The demonstrated camera technology has reduced cost, weight, size and power by almost n times (where n is the number of bands) compared to a conventional multispectral camera.