Automatic centroid determination of microlens arrays in plenoptic imaging systems

Abstract

One aspect determines centroids of a plenoptic image, which correspond to the center view of the plenoptic image. A search band spanning a range of different values along a search direction (e.g., range of Δy) is determined. Multiple slices of the plenoptic image are taken at different values of the search coordinate (i.e., different y values). Because the plenoptic image has a periodic structure imposed by the periodicity of the microlens array, each slice will have a strong frequency component at this fundamental frequency. A slice corresponding to the centroid location (i.e., value of y at the centroid) is selected based on analysis of these frequency components. In one approach, the slice with the weakest component at this fundamental frequency is selected as the centroid. A similar approach can be performed in the orthogonal direction to obtain the two-dimensional coordinates of the centroids.