Light-Efficient Holographic Illumination for Continuous-Wave Time-of-Flight Imaging

Abstract

Time-of-flight (TOF) cameras have seen widespread adoption in recent years across the entire spectrum of commodity devices. However, these devices are fundamentally limited by their dynamic range, struggling with saturation from nearby, brighter objects and noisy depth from farther, darker objects. In this work, we explore overcoming these limitations in the context of continuous-wave time-of-flight (CWTOF) devices, by using a holographic light source capable of redistributing light according to arbitrary patterns. In particular, we propose using such a system to move light from overexposed to underexposed regions of a scene, such that the entire scene is well exposed. Such a methodology can be easily integrated with existing illumination schemes for TOF. Our proof-of-concept prototype is constructed from off-the-shelf optical components, and demonstrated on a number of lab scenes.