This book presents a detailed analysis of spectral imaging, describing how it can be used for the purposes of material identification, object recognition and scene understanding. The opportunities and challenges of combining spatial and spectral information are explored in depth, as are a wide range of applications. Features: discusses spectral image acquisition by hyperspectral cameras, and the process of spectral image formation; examines models of surface reflectance, the recovery of photometric invariants, and the estimation of the illuminant power spectrum from spectral imagery; describes spectrum representations for the interpolation of reflectance and radiance values, and the classification of spectra; reviews the use of imaging spectroscopy for material identification; explores the recovery of reflection geometry from image reflectance; investigates spectro-polarimetric imagery, and the recovery of object shape and material properties using polarimetric images captured froma single view.