Hyperspectral imaging system with hybrid unmixing

A hyperspectral imaging system for generating a representative image of a target, which is configured to use a hybrid unmixing technique (HyU), comprising:

• an image forming system;
• wherein the image forming system has a configuration that:
• acquires a detected radiation of the target, wherein the detected radiation comprises at least two target waves, each target wave having a detected intensity and a different detected wavelength;
• forms a target image using the detected target radiation, wherein the target image comprises at least two image pixels, and wherein each image pixel corresponds to one physical point on the target;
• forms at least one intensity spectrum for each image pixel using the detected intensity and the detected wavelength of each target wave;
• transforms the intensity spectrum of each image pixel using a Fourier transform into a complex-valued function based on the intensity spectrum of each image pixel, wherein each complex-valued function has at least one real component and at least one imaginary component;
• forms one phasor point on a phasor plane for each image pixel by plotting a value of the real component against a value of the imaginary component, wherein the value of the real component is referred to as the real value hereafter, and wherein the value of the imaginary component is referred to as the imaginary value hereafter;
• forms a phasor histogram comprising at least two phasor bins, wherein each phasor bin comprises at least one phasor point;
• aggregates the detected spectra belonging to the image pixels of each phasor bin;
• generates a representative intensity spectrum for each phasor bin;
• unmixes representative intensity spectra of the phasor bins by using an unmixing technique, thereby determining an abundance of each spectral endmember of the detected radiation;
• determines an abundance of each spectral endmember in the representative intensity spectra and the detected intensity belonging to the image pixel;
• and
• generates a representative intensity image of the target representing the abundance of each spectral endmember.