A friend of mine was recently hired as a graduate software developer in a company that specializes in hyperspectral imaging (HSI). This is when I first heard about this technology.

While I did not give much thought initially (I didn’t really know what it was), the more he spoke about it the more interested I became. From our conversations I was beginning to learn about its primary functions and how widely applicable the HSI is. It blew my mind.

Hyperspectral imaging is technique of collecting and processing large number of images of the same spatial area at different wavelengths. HSI obtains the spectrum for each pixel in the image of an area.

The collected data forms what is called a hyperspectral cube, where two dimensions represent the area while third dimension represents the spectral content.

I went on a quest of looking for more information about the subject in a more programming related context. I have found that the availability of sample data is somehow limited. There was also not many programming related training materials and the ones that I have found did not provide much context about the methods used.

Let’s get started.