The von Kries hypothesis and a basis for color constancy

Abstract

Color constancy is almost exclusively modeled with diagonal transforms. However, the choice of basis under which diagonal transforms are taken is traditionally ad hoc. Attempts to remedy the situation have been hindered by the fact that no joint characterization of the conditions for {sensors, illuminants, reflectances} to support diagonal color constancy has previously been achieved. In this work, we observe that the von Kries compatibility conditions are impositions only on the sensor measurements, not the physical spectra. This allows us to formulate the von Kries compatibility conditions succinctly as rank constraints on an order 3 measurement tensor. Given this, we propose an algorithm that computes a (locally) optimal choice of color basis for diagonal color constancy and compare the results against other proposed choices.