Overcoming spatio-angular trade-off in light field acquisition using compressive sensing

Abstract

In contrast to conventional cameras which capture a 2D projection of a 3D scene by integrating the angular domain, light field cameras preserve the angular information of individual light rays by capturing a 4D light field of a scene. On the one hand, light field photography enables powerful post-capture capabilities such as refocusing, virtual aperture, depth sensing and perspective shift. On the other hand, it has several drawbacks, namely, high-dimensionality of the captured light fields and a fundamental trade-off between spatial and angular resolution in the camera design. In this paper, we propose a compressive sensing approach to light field acquisition from a sub-Nyquist number of samples. Using an off-the-shelf measurement setup consisting of a digital projector and a Lytro Illum light field camera, we demonstrate the efficiency of the compressive sensing approach by improving the spatial resolution of the acquired light field. This paper presents a proof of concept with a simplified 3D scene as the scene of interest. Results obtained by the proposed method show significant improvement in the spatial resolution of the light field as well as preserved post-capture capabilities.