Light field camera and integral 3D display: 3D image reconstruction based on lightfield data

Abstract

Recently, light field cameras have become popular as cameras with which you can refocus images after having taken pictures. In this paper I report that combination of this light field camera and integral display has useful features for 3D image capture and reconstruction. Refocusing function is based on 3D information contained in light field data and this fact means that a light field camera captures 3D images and encodes them in the 2D sensor plane by micro lens array. This 3D capturing is unique in two points; one is that a light field camera acquires not real 3D object images but 3D image plane compressed in axial direction by the object lens in proportion to ratio of longitudinal and lateral magnification. So when captured 3D image plane is shown on the integral display, the actual 3D image is reconstructed near display screen like an embossed carving. The other point is that the reconstructed image is of higher resolution than density of micro lens. Light filed data by the light field camera basically contain full resolution information not limited by density of micro lens. This implicit resolution in encoded data comes out, when the light field data is decoded by the integral display thorough optical convolutional process.