Fast Back-Projection for Non-Line of Sight Reconstruction

Recent works have demonstrated non-line of sight (NLOS) reconstruction by using the time-resolved signal frommultiply scattered light. These works combine ultrafast imaging systems with computation, which back-projects the recorded space-time signal to build a probabilistic map of the hidden geometry. Unfortunately, this computation is slow, becoming a bottleneck as the imaging technology improves. In this work, we propose a new back-projection technique for NLOS reconstruction, which is up to a thousand times faster than previous work, with almost no quality loss. We base on the observation that the hidden geometry probability map can be built as the intersection of the three-bounce space-time manifolds defined by the light illuminating the hidden geometry and the visible point receiving the scattered light from such hidden geometry. This allows us to pose the reconstruction of the hidden geometry as the voxelization of these space-time manifolds, which has lower theoretic complexity and is easily implementable in the GPU. We demonstrate the efficiency and quality of our technique compared against previous methods in both captured and synthetic dat

Non-line-of-sight tracking of people at long range

A remote-sensing system that can determine the position of hidden objects has applications in many critical real-life scenarios, such as search and rescue missions and safe autonomous driving. Previous work has shown the ability to range and image objects hidden from the direct line of sight, employing advanced optical imaging technologies aimed at small objects at short range. In this work we demonstrate a long-range tracking system based on single laser illumination and single-pixel single-photon detection. This enables us to track one or more people hidden from view at a stand-off distance of over 50~m. These results pave the way towards next generation LiDAR systems that will reconstruct not only the direct-view scene but also the main elements hidden behind walls or corners

Non-line-of-sight transient rendering

The capture and analysis of light in flight, or light in transient state, has enabled applications such as range imaging, reflectance estimation and especially non-line-of-sight (NLOS) imaging. For this last case, hidden geometry can be reconstructed using time-resolved measurements of indirect diffuse light emitted by a laser. Transient rendering is a key tool for developing such new applications, significantly more challenging than its steady-state counterpart. In this work, we introduce a set of simple yet effective subpath sampling techniques targeting transient light transport simulation in occluded scenes. We analyze the usual capture setups of NLOS scenes, where both the camera and light sources are focused on particular points in the scene. Also, the hidden geometry can be difficult to sample using conventional techniques. We leverage that configuration to reduce the integration path space. We implement our techniques in a modified version of Mitsuba 2 adapted for transient light transport, allowing us to support parallelization, polarization, and differentiable rendering. © 2022 The Author(s