•An accurate analyzing method for depth of field of the integral image 3D display is proposed.•An integral imaging 3D display with an enhanced depth of field is realized.•The 2D/3D convertible ...display is realized.
Depth of field (DOF) enhancement and two-dimensional (2D)/three-dimensional (3D) convertible display are important research areas of integral imaging 3D display. However, there is no accurate definition of DOF in existing integral imaging 3D displays, and it is difficult to realize DOF enhancement and 2D/3D convertible display simultaneously. In this paper, we propose a DOF analysis method for integral imaging 3D display, and derive an accurate definition of DOF by analyzing the voxel formation mechanism and the minimum resolution angle of the human eyes. Then a 2D/3D convertible integral imaging display with an enhanced DOF is proposed based on the definition of the DOF. The DOF enhancement and different display modes of 2D and 3D are realized by using two sets of dual-state optical components, including polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) films and liquid crystal micro-lens arrays (LCMLAs). When PDLC film in one set is scattering and LCMLA has the optical properties of a micro-lens array, while PDLC film in the other set is transparent and LCMLA has the optical properties of a flat glass at the same time, the system operates in 3D display modes. Two sets of DOFs are formed in turns and spliced to enhance the whole DOF based on the persistence of vision. When only one PDLC film is scattering and two LCMLAs both have the optical properties of a flat glass, the system realizes 2D display. The experiments on the 2D/3D convertible integral imaging display prototype verify that the DOF is enhanced to 1.71 times and 2D/3D convertible display is realized simultaneously compared with the display based on a conventional micro-lens array. The proposed display has potential for applications in areas such as education and medical care.
Shallow depth-of-field is commonly used by photographers to isolate a subject from a distracting background. However, standard cell phone cameras cannot produce such images optically, as their short ...focal lengths and small apertures capture nearly all-in-focus images. We present a system to computationally synthesize shallow depth-of-field images with a single mobile camera and a single button press. If the image is of a person, we use a person segmentation network to separate the person and their accessories from the background. If available, we also use dense
dual-pixel
auto-focus hardware, effectively a 2-sample light field with an approximately 1 millimeter baseline, to compute a dense depth map. These two signals are combined and used to render a defocused image. Our system can process a 5.4 megapixel image in 4 seconds on a mobile phone, is fully automatic, and is robust enough to be used by non-experts. The modular nature of our system allows it to degrade naturally in the absence of a dual-pixel sensor or a human subject.
Camera arrays provide spatial and angular information within a single snapshot. With refocusing methods, focal planes can be altered after exposure. In this letter, we propose a light field ...refocusing method to improve the imaging quality of camera arrays. In our method, the disparity is first estimated. Then, the unfocused region (bokeh) is rendered by using a depth-based anisotropic filter. Finally, the refocused image is produced by a reconstruction-based superresolution approach where the bokeh image is used as a regularization term. Our method can selectively refocus images with focused region being superresolved and bokeh being esthetically rendered. Our method also enables postadjustment of depth of field. We conduct experiments on both public and self-developed datasets. Our method achieves superior visual performance with acceptable computational cost as compared to the other state-of-the-art methods.
Acquisition of high-resolution images from within internal organs using endoscopic optical imaging has numerous clinical applications. However, difficulties associated with optical aberrations and ...the trade-off between transverse resolution and depth-of-focus significantly limit the scope of applications. Here, we integrate a metalens, with the ability to modify the phase of incident light at sub-wavelength level, into the design of an endoscopic optical coherence tomography catheter (termed nano-optic endoscope) to achieve near diffraction-limited imaging through negating non-chromatic aberrations. Remarkably, the tailored chromatic dispersion of the metalens in the context of spectral interferometry is utilized to maintain high-resolution imaging beyond the input field Rayleigh range, easing the trade-off between transverse resolution and depth-of-focus. We demonstrate endoscopic imaging both in resected human lung specimens and in sheep airways
. The combination of the superior resolution and higher imaging depth-of-focus of the nano-optic endoscope will likely increase the clinical utility of endoscopic optical imaging.
The depth of field (DoF) was extended 2.8‐fold to achieve rapid crystal screening by retrofitting a custom‐designed micro‐retarder array (µRA) in the optical beam path of a nonlinear optical ...microscope. The merits of the proposed strategy for DoF enhancement were assessed in applications of second‐harmonic generation imaging of protein crystals. It was found that DoF extension increased the number of crystals detected while simultaneously reducing the number of `z‐slices' required for screening. Experimental measurements of the wavelength‐dependence of the extended DoF were in excellent agreement with theoretical predictions. These results provide a simple and broadly applicable approach to increase the throughput of existing nonlinear optical imaging methods for protein crystal screening.
The addition of a single optical element enabled a 2.8‐fold reduction of the data‐acquisition time in crystal‐screening processes based on optical imaging approaches.
Incoherent digital holography (IDH) enables the recording of holograms with incoherent light. However, there is unnatural bokeh with ringing on reconstructed 2D images, owing to the diffraction ...calculation based on the coherent nature of the light. Thus, we propose a transformation method that converts it into incoherent bokeh. This proposed method can generate 2D images without ringing from recorded holograms through a virtual incoherent imaging system, while focusing on the non-linearity problem of reconstruction distances in IDH. Flexible depth-of-field control is also made possible by the judicious selection of parameters in this method. A proof-of-principle demonstration verifies its feasibility.
In this article, we report an imaging method, termed Fourier ptychographic microscopy (FPM), which iteratively stitches together a number of variably illuminated, low-resolution intensity images in ...Fourier space to produce a wide-field, high-resolution complex sample image. By adopting a wavefront correction strategy, the FPM method can also correct for aberrations and digitally extend a microscope's depth-of-focus beyond the physical limitations of its optics. As a demonstration, we built a microscope prototype with a resolution of 0.78 μm, a field-of-view of ~120 mm
, and a resolution-invariant depth-of-focus of 0.3 mm (characterized at 632 nm). Gigapixel colour images of histology slides verify FPM's successful operation. The reported imaging procedure transforms the general challenge of high-throughput, high-resolution microscopy from one that is coupled to the physical limitations of the system's optics to one that is solvable through computation.
Real camera systems have a limited depth of field (DOF) which may cause an image to be degraded due to visible misfocus or too shallow DOF. In this paper, we present a blind deblurring pipeline able ...to restore such images by slightly extending their DOF and recovering sharpness in regions slightly out of focus. To address this severely ill-posed problem, our algorithm relies first on the estimation of the spatially varying defocus blur. Drawing on local frequency image features, a machine learning approach based on the recently introduced regression tree fields is used to train a model able to regress a coherent defocus blur map of the image, labeling each pixel by the scale of a defocus point spread function. A non-blind spatially varying deblurring algorithm is then used to properly extend the DOF of the image. The good performance of our algorithm is assessed both quantitatively, using realistic ground truth data obtained with a novel approach based on a plenoptic camera, and qualitatively with real images.
A conventional camera captures blurred versions of scene information away from the plane of focus. Camera systems have been proposed that allow for recording all-focus images, or for extracting ...depth, but to record both simultaneously has required more extensive hardware and reduced spatial resolution. We propose a simple modification to a conventional camera that allows for the simultaneous recovery of both (a) high resolution image information and (b) depth information adequate for semi-automatic extraction of a layered depth representation of the image.
Our modification is to insert a patterned occluder within the aperture of the camera lens, creating a coded aperture. We introduce a criterion for depth discriminability which we use to design the preferred aperture pattern. Using a statistical model of images, we can recover both depth information and an all-focus image from single photographs taken with the modified camera. A layered depth map is then extracted, requiring user-drawn strokes to clarify layer assignments in some cases. The resulting sharp image and layered depth map can be combined for various photographic applications, including automatic scene segmentation, post-exposure refocusing, or re-rendering of the scene from an alternate viewpoint.
A light-field camera captures both the intensity and the direction of incoming light
. This enables a user to refocus pictures and afterwards reconstruct information on the depth of field. Research ...on light-field imaging can be divided into two components: acquisition and rendering. Microlens arrays have been used for acquisition, but obtaining broadband achromatic images with no spherical aberration remains challenging. Here, we describe a metalens array made of gallium nitride (GaN) nanoantennas
that can be used to capture light-field information and demonstrate a full-colour light-field camera devoid of chromatic aberration. The metalens array contains an array of 60 × 60 metalenses with diameters of 21.65 μm. The camera has a diffraction-limited resolution of 1.95 μm under white light illumination. The depth of every object in the scene can be reconstructed slice by slice from a series of rendered images with different depths of focus. Full-colour, achromatic light-field cameras could find applications in a variety of fields such as robotic vision, self-driving vehicles and virtual and augmented reality.
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