Smarter Spectral Imaging: Right-Sizing Multispectral and Hyperspectral Systems for Industrial Machine Vision

Spectral imaging is a powerful tool for industrial inspection and sorting, but hyperspectral systems can be selected by default when a simpler, lower-cost multispectral approach would suffice. This talk offers a practical guide to choosing between the two, using multi-wavelength LED line lights as the illumination backbone. It covers the fundamentals of multispectral and hyperspectral line-scan imaging, the key trade-offs in throughput, complexity, and cost, and the illumination challenges specific to each technique. Through real-world application examples, we will show how to identify when multispectral imaging is sufficient and when the full spectral capture of hyperspectral imaging is genuinely required - helping system designers match the tool to the task, whilst at the same time minimizing unnecessary system cost and complexity.

About the presenter
Dr Matthew Branch is a Global Product Manager for LED Specialized Products with Exaktera, a manufacturer of critical LED lighting, laser technology, and optical measurement systems for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in industrial automation, medical, and machine vision markets. Matthew has over 15 years of experience in the field of LED industrial and machine vision lighting and has been instrumental in the development of ProPhotonix's multispectral and hyperspectral LED line lights. Based in Cork, Ireland, he manages existing products and new development initiatives for LED lighting across multiple and varied market segments.