In the present research, the compatibility of dyes was evaluated using a scanner by the application of the method proposed by Khalili and Amirshahi, which had been proved as a novel and accurate method for evaluating the compatibility behavior of dye mixtures. A dip-test method was employed to dye samples, compatibility panels, in binary combinations of cationic dyes on acrylic fibers. In order to use the scanner, first the device was colorimetrically characterized using a regression technique. The tristimulus values obtained from the scanner were, then, used for the reconstruction of the reflectance of the compatibility panels by principal component analysis. Next, the reconstructed reflectance of the panels were transferred to the corresponding K/S spectra and the Khalili and Amirshahi proposed method applied to the spectra in order to obtain the percentage variance (PV), which is the criterion of the dye compatibility. The comparison between the PVs obtained from the scanner and the corresponding one calculated by the spectrophotometrically measured reflectance of the compatibility panels showed a very significant correlation of the compatibility results regarding Pearson correlation coefficients and their K values. It was concluded that due to the smoothness of the reconstructed spectra and the performance of the PCA method of the reconstruction, which manifest itself in the good spectral reconstruction, the scanner method joined with the Khalili and Amirshahi proposed method can reliably be used for the determination of dye mixtures compatibility by a dip test. (C) 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.