The basic concepts and vocabulary conventions for the MIL Color Analysis module are:
Area identifier image. An image, provided with the color matching operation, that specifies the target areas.
Background pixels. Pixels outside the target areas.
Best-matched color-sample. The color-sample that most matches a target area's color, with respect to all color matching constraints.
Color distance. The numerical difference between two colors.
Color-sample element. The individual color data entities that define a color-sample.
Color identification. Matching the color of each target area with the best color-sample.
Color matching. Calling McolMatch() to perform color identification or supervised color segmentation.
Color matching context. The container for all color-samples and color matching settings.
Color-sample. The information, in the context, that defines the color to be processed using relative color calibration or color matching. For relative color calibration, color-samples have an associated color-mapping between it and the reference color-sample.
Color space. A mathematical model, that typically has 3 components (for example, RGB, HSL, LAB), with which to describe colors.
Color space encoding. Color transformation from the range represented in an image buffer (for example, 0 to 255) to its native (theoretical) range (for example, all real numbers between 0 and 1).
First principal component. The strongest principal component vector computed from a PCA. If no principal component is the strongest, one is arbitrarily considered the first principal component.
IEC. Refers to the International Electrotechnical Commission, a globally-recognized standards organization in the field of electrotechnology.
Match score. A measure of similarity between the color of the target area and the color of the color-sample, when performing color matching.
Outliers. Pixels, within a target area, that do not relate to any color-sample.
Principal component analysis (PCA). A mathematical analysis which, when applied to a color image's data, results in vectors pointing towards the direction of maximum color variance. Each vector is considered a principal component. There are as many principal components as there are color bands.
Reference color-sample. The information, in the relative color calibration context, with which to establish the color mapping used in the relative color calibration.
Reference color space. The standard used to interpret the color space data (for example, sRGB).
Relative color calibration. Calling McolTransform() to adjust an image's color data according to the mapping associated with a color-sample in a relative color calibration context.
Relative color calibration context. The container for the reference color-sample, the color-samples, and the color mapping with which to perform relative color calibration.
Relevance score. A measure of confidence associated with the color match score.
Source color space. The color space with which the MIL Color Analysis module interprets color.
sRGB. Standard RGB specifications, as defined by the IEC Project Team 61966-2-1.
Supervised color segmentation. Matching the color of each target area pixel with the best color-sample. Used to determine the proportion of color in a target area, based on the color-samples.
Target. The image with which to perform the color matching.
Target area. A section of the target with which to match a color-sample.
Triplet. A color-sample defined with three explicit color component values.