Hyperspectral reconstruction from RGB images for vein visualization

A hyperspectral camera captures a scene in many frequency bands across the spectrum, providing rich information and facilitating numerous applications. The potential of hyperspectral imaging has been established for decades. However, to date hyperspectral imaging has only seen success in specialized and large-scale industrial and military applications. This is mainly due to the high cost of hyperspectral cameras (upwards of $20K) and the complexity of the acquisition system which makes the technology out of reach for many commercial and end-user applications. In this paper, we propose a deep learning based approach to convert RGB image sequences taken by regular cameras to (partial) hyperspectral images. This can enable, for example, low-cost mobile phones to leverage the characteristics of hyperspectral images in implementing novel applications. We show the benefits of the conversion model by designing a vein localization and visualization application that traditionally uses hyperspectral images. Our application uses only RGB images and produces accurate results. Vein visualization is important for point-of-care medical applications. We collected hyperspectral data to validate the proposed conversion model. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is promising and can bring some of the benefits of expensive hyperspectral cameras to the low-cost and pervasive RGB cameras, enabling many new applications and enhancing the performance of others. We also evaluate the vein visualization application and show its accuracy.