Optimal LED Selection for Multispectral Lighting Reproduction

We demonstrate the sufficiency of using as few as five LEDs of distinct spectra for multispectral lighting reproduction and solve for the optimal set of five from 11 such commercially available LEDs. We leverage published spectral reflectance, illuminant, and camera spectral sensitivity datasets to show that two approaches of lighting reproduction, matching illuminant spectra directly and matching material color appearance observed by one or more cameras or a human observer, yield the same LED selections. Our proposed optimal set of five LEDs includes red, green, and blue with narrow emission spectra, along with white and amber with broader spectra.