Under the assumption that the interaction between objects and light is completely described by reflectance curves, we were able to determine filters to reconstruct and discriminate objects optimally. We found that in most cases the colour matching functions are not optimal and that sometimes better results are obtained with one well-chosen filter.
M. Mahy, P. Wambacq, L. Van Eycken, A. Oosterlinck, "Optimal Filters for the Reconstruction and Discrimination of Reflectance Curves" in Proc. IS&T 2nd Color and Imaging Conf., 1994, pp 140 - 142, https://doi.org/10.2352/CIC.1994.2.1.art00039