Multi-dimensional Imaging

Chapter 11Three-Dimensional Integral Imaging and Display

Manuel Martínez-Corral¹, Adrián Dorado¹, Anabel LLavador¹, Genaro Saavedra¹ and Bahram Javidi²

¹Department of Optics, University of Valencia, Spain

²Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Connecticut, USA

11.1 Introduction

Conventional photographic cameras do not have the capacity to record all of the information carried by the rays of light passing through their objective lens, which indeed impacts on the image sensor pixels from many directions [1]. The irradiance collected by any pixel is proportional to the sum of radiances of all rays, regardless of their incidence angles. Thus, a typical picture obtained with a conventional camera contains, of course, a 2D image (or in other words a pixelated 2D irradiance map) of the original 3D object, in which any information about intensity and angle of impinging light rays is lost.

Much more interesting would be to have a system with the capacity of registering a map with the radiance and direction of all the rays proceeding from the 3D scene. Such a map has been named in different ways, such as integral photography, integral imaging, lightfield map, or even a plenoptic map.

Interest in the capture and display of 3D images is not a modern issue. In fact in 1838, Wheatstone [2] tackled the problem of displaying 3D images through the first stereoscope. Soon later, Rollman faced the same problem, but proposed the use of anaglyphs [3]. But the main problem ...