An algorithm for synthesizing elemental images using the line of sight in three-dimensional integral imaging

Abstract

Integral imaging (integral photography) is one of the promising three-dimensional display techniques, which is composed of pick up and display steps in general. In pick up step, a two-dimensional image array, elemental images that have three-dimensional information of the object, is obtained. In display step, the elemental images are displayed and integrated through a lens array for observer to see 3D image. Thus making elemental images in the pick up step is an important process since the 3D information of the objects is included in the elemental images through this step. In this paper, we examine the problem of synthesizing elemental images of virtual views from an elemental image using the line of sight (LOS) algorithm. LOS can handle any number of input images while simultaneously using the information from all of them, and can be applied in integral imaging to generate elemental images. However, very few images are usually enough to provide reasonable synthesis quality. The explanation of the proposed algorithm is provided and the results on real images are presented also.