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10/27/2026 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 10/28/2026 03:14

Removing Fringes from Hyperspectral Images Using Truncated-Singular Value Decomposition

Published
October 27, 2026

Author(s)

Young Lee, Da Bin Kim

Abstract

Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) often suffers from optical interference fringes that distort resonant spectral features and obscure spatial information. While various hardware and computational mitigation strategies exist, they often become ineffective when interference frequencies overlap with molecular absorption bands or when fringes are irregularly shaped. In this study, we introduce a straightforward, non-iterative approach to eliminate fringes from infrared (IR) HSI by leveraging the wavelength-dependency of fringe patterns in contrast to fixed resonant features in wavelength-variable images. We use singular value decomposition (SVD) to separate them: resonant features are represented by a few principal singular values (SVs), while optical interferences span a wide range of higher-rank SVs. Then, truncated SVD (TSVD) selects low-rank SVs (resonant) and discards high-rank SVs (fringe). We test the TSVD defringing method on synthetic models of increasing complexity, including uniform films, multi-component patterns, and spatially varying molecular orientation samples. Furthermore, the method's defringing performance is demonstrated on an experimental IR image of a sheared polymer film. Our results confirm that the TSVD method successfully suppresses complex spatial fringes and restores accurate spectral profiles without prior knowledge of the sample, providing a robust, data-driven framework broadly applicable across HSI modalities.
Citation
Optics Express
Volume
34
Issue
22
Pub Type
Journals

Keywords

Infrared Hyperspectral Imaging, Fringe Suppression, Interference, Truncated singular value decomposition, Chemometrics, Microscopy

Citation

Lee, Y. and Kim, D. (2026), Removing Fringes from Hyperspectral Images Using Truncated-Singular Value Decomposition, Optics Express, [online], https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.612786, https://nps-ext.nist.gov/nps/nps_public_api/api/Publication/file/962327 (Accessed October 28, 2026)
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NIST - National Institute of Standards and Technology published this content on October 27, 2026, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on October 28, 2026 at 09:14 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at [email protected]