London, Oct 5 (IANS): Researchers have designed a new imaging system capable of capturing up to 12 times more colour information than the human eye.

This development could be used to create new assisted vehicle driving systems, to identify counterfeit bills and documents, or to obtain more accurate medical images than those provided by current systems.

The scientists designed this new system using a new generation of sensors - developed at the Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy - in combination with a matrix of multi-spectral filters to improve their performance.

"The new sensors called Transverse Field Detectors (TFD) are capable of extracting full colour information from each pixel in the image, without the need for a layer of colour filter," said Miguel Angel Martinez Domingo from University of Granada.

Colour image sensors are now found in all digital cameras.

Multi-spectral images open an endless series of possibilities within the most diverse fields of science: medical imaging, remote sensing, satellite images, military and defence technology, industrial applications, robotic vision and assisted or automatic driving.

"To study the way in which light interacts with our environment can give us very valuable information on its behaviour in a totally innocuous and non-invasive way," researchers concluded.