Ricoh Company, Ltd.

Liyang Lu

Kathrin Berkner

Lingfei Meng

Noah Denis Bedard

Ivana Tosic

A collimated object is adjustable to produce collimated light propagating along different propagation directions. The plenoptic imaging system under calibration captures plenoptic images of the object adjusted to different propagation directions. The captured plenoptic images includes superpixels, each of which includes subpixels. Each subpixel captures light from a corresponding light field viewing direction. Based on the captured plenoptic images, a calibration module calculates which propagation directions map to which subpixels. The mapping defines the light field viewing directions for the subpixels. This can be used to improve processing of plenoptic images captured by the plenoptic imaging system.

Object space calibration of plenoptic imaging systems

A plenoptic camera captures a plenoptic image of an object illuminated by a point source (preferably, collimated illumination). The plenoptic image is a sampling of the four-dimensional light field reflected from the object. The plenoptic image is made up of superpixels, each of which is made up of subpixels. Each superpixel captures light from a certain region of the object (i.e., a range of x,y spatial locations) and the subpixels within a superpixel capture light propagating within a certain range of directions (i.e., a range of u,v spatial directions). Accordingly, optical properties estimation, surface normal reconstruction, depth estimation, and three-dimensional rendering can be provided by processing only a single plenoptic image. In one approach, the plenoptic image is used to estimate the bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) of the object surface.

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Houston, TX, United States of America

Liyang Lu