Spatio-Spectro-Temporal Characterisation and Correction of Dark Current in a Snapshot Hyperspectral Sensor

Building on this characterisation, a modular correction framework was developed to stabilise the dark signal across spatial, spectral, and temporal domains. Across laboratory datasets, the framework reduced temporal drift by 70-85%, DSNU variance by approximately 37.5%, and suppressed >99.9% of persistent hot pixels, substantially improving radiometric stability. Corrected data exhibited simultaneous spatial uniformity, temporal stability, and spectral integrity, enabling downstream radiometric processing without introducing spectral distortion.

Application of Senop HSC-2 to UAV-acquired wheat canopy imagery demonstrated effective transfer to field conditions, improving spectral continuity and robustness of vegetation indices after dark current correction. These results establish a transferable calibration approach for affordable snapshot hyperspectral sensors and demonstrate that rigorous dark current correction is essential for achieving quantitative radiometric performance in UAV-based phenotyping and precision agriculture applications without active thermal control, extending calibration principles traditionally applied in satellite hyperspectral systems to low-cost UAV snapshot sensors.<p></p>