Manuel Martínez-Corral

Advances in three-dimensional integral imaging: sensing, display, and applications [Invited]

Three-dimensional (3D) sensing and imaging technologies have been extensively researched for many applications in the fields of entertainment, medicine, robotics, manufacturing, industrial inspection, security, surveillance, and defense due to their diverse and significant benefits. Integral imaging is a passive multiperspective imaging technique, which records multiple two-dimensional images of a scene from different perspectives. Unlike holography, it can capture a scene such as outdoor events with incoherent or ambient light. Integral imaging can display a true 3D color image with full parallax and continuous viewing angles by incoherent light; thus it does not suffer from speckle degradation. Because of its unique properties, integral imaging has been revived over the past decade or so as a promising approach for massive 3D commercialization. A series of key articles on this topic have appeared in the OSA journals, including Applied Optics. Thus, it is fitting that this Commemorative Review presents an overview of literature on physical principles and applications of integral imaging. Several data capture configurations, reconstruction, and display methods are overviewed. In addition, applications including 3D underwater imaging, 3D imaging in photon-starved environments, 3D tracking of occluded objects, 3D optical microscopy, and 3D polarimetric imaging are reviewed.

Progress in 3-D Multiperspective Display by Integral Imaging

Three-dimensional (3-D) imaging techniques have the potential to establish a future mass-market in the fields of entertainment and communications. Integral imaging (InI), which can capture and display true 3-D color images, has been seen as the right technology for 3-D viewing for audiences of more than one person. Due to the advanced degree of its development, InI technology could be ready for massive commercialization in the coming years. This development is the result of a strong research effort performed over the past few years. In this sense, this paper is devoted to reviewing some recent advances in InI, which have allowed improvement in the response of InI systems to the problems of the limited depth of field, poor axial and lateral resolution, pseudoscopic-to-orthoscopic conversion, production of 3-D images with continuous relief, or the limited range of viewing angles of InI monitors.

Integral imaging with improved depth of field by use of amplitude-modulated microlens arrays

One of the main challenges in three-dimensional integral imaging is its limited depth of field. Such a limitation is imposed by diffraction, among other factors. The easiest way to improve the depth of field is by reducing the numerical aperture of the microlenses. However, such an improvement is obtained at the expense of an important deterioration in the spatial resolution. We propose a technique, which is novel in the context of integral imaging, for improving the depth of field with no deterioration of the spatial resolution. The technique, based on amplitude modulation of the array of phase elements, can substantially improve the figure of merit of the product of depth of the focus and the squared resolution.

Formation of real, orthoscopic integral images by smart pixel mapping

Integral imaging systems are imaging devices that provide 3D images of 3D objects. When integral imaging systems work in their standard configuration the provided reconstructed images are pseudoscopic; that is, are reversed in depth. In this paper we present, for the first time we believe, a technique for formation of real, undistorted, orthoscopic integral images by direct pickup. The technique is based on a smart mapping of pixels of an elemental-images set. Simulated imaging experiments are presented to support our proposal.

Enhanced viewing-angle integral imaging by multiple-axis telecentric relay system

One of the main limitations of integral imaging is the narrow viewing angle. This drawback comes from the limited field of view of microlenses during the pickup and display. We propose a novel all-optical technique which allows the substantial increase of the field of view of any microlens and therefore of the viewing angle of integral-imaging displays.

Three-dimensional superresolution by annular binary filters

We present a new family of annular binary filters for improving the three-dimensional resolving power of optical systems. The filters, whose most important feature is their simplicity, permit to achieve a significant reduction, both in the transverse and in the axial direction, of the central lobe width of the irradiance point spread function of the system. The filters can be used for applications such as optical data storage or confocal scanning microscopy.

Enhanced depth of field integral imaging with sensor resolution constraints

One of the main challenges in integral imaging is to overcome the limited depth of field. Although it is widely assumed that such limitation is mainly imposed by diffraction due to lenslet imaging, we show that the most restricting factor is the pixelated structure of the sensor (CCD). In this context, we demonstrate that by proper reduction of the fill factor of pickup microlenses, the depth of field can be substantially improved with no deterioration of lateral resolution.

Multifacet structure of observed reconstructed integral images

Three-dimensional images generated by an integral imaging system suffer from degradations in the form of grid of multiple facets. This multifacet structure breaks the continuity of the observed image and therefore reduces its visual quality. We perform an analysis of this effect and present the guidelines in the design of lenslet imaging parameters for optimization of viewing conditions with respect to the multifacet degradation. We consider the optimization of the system in terms of field of view, observer position and pupil function, lenslet parameters, and type of reconstruction. Numerical tests are presented to verify the theoretical analysis.

3D integral imaging display by smart pseudoscopic-to-orthoscopic conversion (SPOC)

Previously, we reported a digital technique for formation of real, non-distorted, orthoscopic integral images by direct pickup. However the technique was constrained to the case of symmetric image capture and display systems. Here, we report a more general algorithm which allows the pseudoscopic to orthoscopic transformation with full control over the display parameters so that one can generate a set of synthetic elemental images that suits the characteristics of the Integral-Imaging monitor and permits control over the depth and size of the reconstructed 3D scene.

Tailoring the axial shape of the point spread function using the Toraldo concept

A novel procedure for shaping the axial component of the point spread function of nonparaxial focusing systems by use of phase-only pupil filters is presented. The procedure is based on the Toraldo technique for tailoring focused fields. The resulting pupil filters consist of a number of concentric annular zones with constant real transmittance. The number of zones and their widths can be adapted according to the shape requirements. Our method is applied to design filters that produce axial superresolution in confocal scanning systems.