Color contamination correction based on light intensity correlation in two-color, double-exposure particle tracking velocimetry

An algorithm for correcting color contamination is proposed for two-color, double-exposure particle tracking velocimetry (PTV). A two-color PTV system used in this study consists of blue and green laser diodes and a consumer digital camera, where a laser pulser with an avalanche transistor is developed for achieving optical pulses of 50 ns for application in airflows. In the PTV, the camera captures images of tracer particles illuminated by a sequence of green and blue light pulses with a certain time interval. Because of spectral characteristics of a Bayer filter, camera sensors in a blue channel respond to green light scattered by the particles. This color contamination results in pseudo-particles in the blue channel. Pixels occupied by the pseudo-particles have very high correlation of light intensity between green and blue channels. In the proposed method, the pseudo-particles caused by the color contamination are detected and removed based on the high correlation. The present color contamination correction hardly affects real particles illuminated by the blue laser diodes. Measurements of an airflow induced by DC fans confirm that the proposed system with the color contamination correction works well for PTV.