Reducing Observer Metamerism in Wide-gamut Multiprimary Displays

Emerging electronic display technologies for cinema and television such as LED, OLED, laser and quantum dot are permitting greatly enhanced color gamuts via increasingly narrow-band primary emission spectra. A recent standard adopted for Ultra High Definition television, ITU-R Rec. 2020, promotes RGB primary chromaticities coincident with the spectral locus. As displays trend towards larger gamuts in the traditional 3-primary design, variability in human color sensing is exacerbated. Metameric matches to aim stimuli for one particular observer may yield a notable color mismatch for others, even if all observers are members of a color-normal population. Multiprimary design paradigms may hold value for simultaneously enhancing color gamut and reducing observer metamerism. By carefully selecting primary spectra in systems employing more than 3 emission channels, intentional metameric performance can be controlled. At Rochester Institute of Technology, a prototype multiprimary display has been simulated to minimize observer metamerism and observer variability according to custom indices derived from emerging models for human color vision. The constructed display is further being implemented in observer experiments to validate practical performance and confirm these vision and metamerism models.

HVEI2015 Long
“Reducing Observer Metamerism in Wide-gamut Multiprimary Displays,” Proc. Human Vision and Electronic Imaging, San Francisco, CA (2015)

RIT Multiprimary Display - 7 projector configuration

RIT multiprimary display - 1 projector configuration