Color pattern recognition in white-light joint transform correlation

We first discuss the restriction on the incoherent source and the color fil ters in a joint transform correlation (JTC) system for white-light color pa ttern recognition and then report on a novel, to our knowledge, solution of channeling in a white-light JTC system, using a tricolor grating to encode the color patterns in real time. The theoretical analyses and the experime ntal results show not only that the restriction on the experimental conditi on is relieved but also that parallel channeling of the power spectra of th e encoded pattern is easily performed. In addition, the zero-order power sp ectrum also forms a useful channel for the shape-only correlation (C) 1999 Optical Society of America.