Digital phantoms generated by spectral and spatial light modulators.

A hyperspectral image projector (HIP) based on liquid crystal on silicon spatial light modulators is explained and demonstrated to generate data cubes. The HIP-constructed data cubes are three-dimensional images of the spatial distribution of spectrally resolved abundances of intracellular light-absorbing oxyhemoglobin molecules in single erythrocytes. Spectrally and spatially resolved image data indistinguishable from the real scene may be used as standard data cubes, so-called digital phantoms, to calibrate image sensors and validate image analysis algorithms for their measurement quality, performance consistency, and interlaboratory comparisons for quantitative biomedical imaging applications. (C) 2015 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)