Use of optical fibre in spectrometry and colorimetry with remote probes

Abstract

Measurement of colour is mainly performed using colorimeters but the size of these instruments does not allow to perform measurements in all cases. For this reason we have employed Fibre Optic Reflectance Spectrometry (FORS) to measure colour. With this work we want to give a preliminary study about colour measurements obtained by a spectrometer with remote optical fibre probes in order to obtain colorimetric values. A comparison between a standard colorimeter and a FORS system was done using 28 + 28 colour samples evaluating the influence of optical fibre and of two different geometric set up: the integrating sphere with specular included (SPINC) and the coaxial fibre probe 45°×:45° with specular component excluded (SPEX). The results showed a difference in colorimetric data between the different set up when the chroma value was greater than 40. The FORS system proved to have good reliability in terms of repeatability and relative colour measurements.