Near-infrared hyperspectral image at a glance: Some personal thoughts

First of all, I want to transmit my most humble thanks to all people who believe that I deserve the “2019 Thomas Hirschfeld” award (kindly supported by FOSS) for my work on near-infrared spectroscopy and, especially, applied on hyperspectral images. I must confess that this award caught me by surprise and that I felt a bit overwhelmed when I received it. It is an honour full of respect and responsibility. I have been given the opportunity of writing this article, and I will profit it to express different personal thoughts about general but relevant aspects of near infrared applied to hyperspectral imaging. Also, since I am more a practitioner in chemometrics (or machine learning or data mining, or …) than a developer, I will also include some insights about the beautiful combination of near-infrared hyperspectral image with chemometrics. This article is just a glimpse of constructive criticism with personal thoughts that comes from my little experience in this field. Therefore, and of course, all opinions here are open for constructive discussion with the only purpose of learning (like the machines do nowadays).