Virtual hyperspectral imaging of biological tissue for blood hemoglobin analysis

A system for generating hyperspectral image data for measuring blood hemoglobin, comprising:

• an optical imaging device with a red-green-blue (RGB) sensor adapted to acquire an RGB image representing an entire region of interest having a predetermined size of a plurality of RGB pixels thereby generating an RGB dataset;
• a linescan spectral imaging device adapted to acquire one or more hyperspectral linescans from a subregion of the entire region of interest, wherein the subregion is substantially smaller than the entire region of interest, thereby generating one or more hyperspectral linescan datasets;
• a processor adapted to:
• co-locate a plurality of RGB pixels in the RGB dataset vs. a corresponding plurality of hyperspectral pixels of in the one or more hyperspectral linescan datasets representing the subregion,
• establish a transformation matrix utilizing the plurality of co-located RGB and hyperspectral pixels, the transformation matrix adapted to convert the RGB dataset into a hyperspectral dataset of the subregion,
• apply the transformation matrix to the RGB dataset to thereby generate the a hyperspectral dataset for the entire region of interest, and
• analyze the generated hyperspectral image dataset to determine the biochemical compositions.