A Theory of Optimal Flutter Shutter for Probabilistic Velocity Models

Abstract

Flutter shutter (coded exposure) is a new paradigm for cameras that allows for an arbitrary increase of the exposure time when the relative camera/scene motion is uniform. The photon flux is interrupted according to a flutter shutter code. For arbitrarily severe uniform motion blur a well chosen code guarantees an invertible blur kernel. Yet, when the relative camera/scene velocity is a known constant, a flutter shutter cannot gain more than a 1.17 factor in terms of root mean-squared error compared to the optimal snapshot. In this paper, we prove that this optimality bound can be relaxed under the realistic assumption that a random model for the velocities is available. We give analytical formulae for the optimal flutter shutter code and the optimal snapshots associated with a random velocity distribution. Conversely we also prove formulae that reveal the velocity distribution underlying a given flutter shutter code.