Diffraction-limited plenoptic imaging with correlated light

Traditional optical imaging faces an unavoidable trade-off between resolution and depth of field (DOF). To increase resolution, high numerical apertures (NA) are needed, but the associated large angular uncertainty results in a limited range of depths that can be put in sharp focus. Plenoptic imaging was introduced a few years ago to remedy this trade off. To this aim, plenoptic imaging reconstructs the path of light rays from the lens to the sensor. However, the improvement offered by standard plenoptic imaging is practical and not fundamental: the increased DOF leads to a proportional reduction of the resolution well above the diffraction limit imposed by the lens NA. In this paper, we demonstrate that correlation measurements enable pushing plenoptic imaging to its fundamental limits of both resolution and DOF. Namely, we demonstrate to maintain the imaging resolution at the diffraction limit while increasing the depth of field by a factor of 7. Our results represent the theoretical and experimental basis for the effective development of the promising applications of plenoptic imaging.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figure

A spectral analysis for light field rendering

Image based rendering using the plenoptic function is an efficient technique for re-rendering at different viewpoints. In this paper, we study the sampling and reconstruction problem of plenoptic function as a multidimensional sampling problem. The spectral support of plenoptic function is found to be an important quantity in the efficient sampling and reconstruction of such function. A spectral analysis for the light field, a 4D plenoptic function, is performed. Its spectrum, as a function of the depth function of the scene, is then derived. This result enables us to estimate the spectral support of the light field given some prior estimate of the depth function. Results using a piecewise constant depth model show significant improvement in rendering of the light field images. The design of the reconstruction filter is also discussed.published_or_final_versio

A spectral analysis for light field rendering

Image based rendering using the plenoptic function is an efficient technique for re-rendering at different viewpoints. In this paper, we study the sampling and reconstruction problem of plenoptic function as a multidimensional sampling problem. The spectral support of plenoptic function is found to be an important quantity in the efficient sampling and reconstruction of such function. A spectral analysis for the light field, a 4D plenoptic function, is performed. Its spectrum, as a function of the depth function of the scene, is then derived. This result enables us to estimate the spectral support of the light field given some prior estimate of the depth function. Results using a piecewise constant depth model show significant improvement in rendering of the light field images. The design of the reconstruction filter is also discussed.published_or_final_versio

Correlation plenoptic imaging

Plenoptic imaging is a promising optical modality that simultaneously captures the location and the propagation direction of light in order to enable three-dimensional imaging in a single shot. However, in classical imaging systems, the maximum spatial and angular resolutions are fundamentally linked; thereby, the maximum achievable depth of field is inversely proportional to the spatial resolution. We propose to take advantage of the second-order correlation properties of light to overcome this fundamental limitation. In this paper, we demonstrate that the momentum/position correlation of chaotic light leads to the enhanced refocusing power of correlation plenoptic imaging with respect to standard plenoptic imaging.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Exploring plenoptic properties of correlation imaging with chaotic light

In a setup illuminated by chaotic light, we consider different schemes that enable to perform imaging by measuring second-order intensity correlations. The most relevant feature of the proposed protocols is the ability to perform plenoptic imaging, namely to reconstruct the geometrical path of light propagating in the system, by imaging both the object and the focusing element. This property allows to encode, in a single data acquisition, both multi-perspective images of the scene and light distribution in different planes between the scene and the focusing element. We unveil the plenoptic property of three different setups, explore their refocusing potentialities and discuss their practical applications.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Determining the Phase and Amplitude Distortion of a Wavefront using a Plenoptic Sensor

We have designed a plenoptic sensor to retrieve phase and amplitude changes resulting from a laser beam's propagation through atmospheric turbulence. Compared with the commonly restricted domain of (-pi, pi) in phase reconstruction by interferometers, the reconstructed phase obtained by the plenoptic sensors can be continuous up to a multiple of 2pi. When compared with conventional Shack-Hartmann sensors, ambiguities caused by interference or low intensity, such as branch points and branch cuts, are less likely to happen and can be adaptively avoided by our reconstruction algorithm. In the design of our plenoptic sensor, we modified the fundamental structure of a light field camera into a mini Keplerian telescope array by accurately cascading the back focal plane of its object lens with a microlens array's front focal plane and matching the numerical aperture of both components. Unlike light field cameras designed for incoherent imaging purposes, our plenoptic sensor operates on the complex amplitude of the incident beam and distributes it into a matrix of images that are simpler and less subject to interference than a global image of the beam. Then, with the proposed reconstruction algorithms, the plenoptic sensor is able to reconstruct the wavefront and a phase screen at an appropriate depth in the field that causes the equivalent distortion on the beam. The reconstructed results can be used to guide adaptive optics systems in directing beam propagation through atmospheric turbulence. In this paper we will show the theoretical analysis and experimental results obtained with the plenoptic sensor and its reconstruction algorithms.Comment: This article has been accepted by JOSA

Correlation Plenoptic Imaging With Entangled Photons

Plenoptic imaging is a novel optical technique for three-dimensional imaging in a single shot. It is enabled by the simultaneous measurement of both the location and the propagation direction of light in a given scene. In the standard approach, the maximum spatial and angular resolutions are inversely proportional, and so are the resolution and the maximum achievable depth of focus of the 3D image. We have recently proposed a method to overcome such fundamental limits by combining plenoptic imaging with an intriguing correlation remote-imaging technique: ghost imaging. Here, we theoretically demonstrate that correlation plenoptic imaging can be effectively achieved by exploiting the position-momentum entanglement characterizing spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) photon pairs. As a proof-of-principle demonstration, we shall show that correlation plenoptic imaging with entangled photons may enable the refocusing of an out-of-focus image at the same depth of focus of a standard plenoptic device, but without sacrificing diffraction-limited image resolution.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure