Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Uncertainty Analysis of Reflectance Colorimetry

Published

Author(s)

E A. Early, Maria E. Nadal

Abstract

The specification of the color of an object is important, sometimes crucially, to its acceptability for an intended application. When quantitative measurements are used to determine the color of an object, an uncertainty is required to satisfy the requirements of traceability. Determining the uncertainty of a color measurement has been a topic of interest for many years, and has received additional impetus with the publication of the ISO Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement, which describes methods for estimating uncertainties in a consistent manner. These methods are applied to the case of reflectance colorimetry, where many of the sources of uncertainty are caused by systematic effects and are therefore correlated. Analytical expressions are derived for the combined uncertainties in the quantitative expression of color due to both correlated and uncorrelated effects. The measurement equation is used to derive the uncertainties in reflectance factor from different sources, and to take correlations between signals at the same wavelength into account. The correlations between reflectance factors at different wavelengths are also included in the analysis. These concepts are illustrated by considering uncertainties from common sources for selected colored specimens.
Proceedings Title
Oxford Conference on Spectroscopy | 4th | | SPIE
Volume
4826
Conference Dates
June 1, 2002
Conference Title
Proceedings of SPIE--the International Society for Optical Engineering

Keywords

color, colorimetry, correlations, reflectance, uncertainties, uncertainty analysis

Citation

Early, E. and Nadal, M. (2003), Uncertainty Analysis of Reflectance Colorimetry, Oxford Conference on Spectroscopy | 4th | | SPIE (Accessed December 14, 2024)

Issues

If you have any questions about this publication or are having problems accessing it, please contact reflib@nist.gov.

Created June 1, 2003, Updated June 2, 2021