G Wetzstein, I Ihrke, D Lanman, W Heidrich

Abstract

The plenoptic function is a ray-based model for light that includes the color spectrum as well as spatial, temporal, and directional variation. Although digital light sensors have greatly evolved in the last years, one fundamental limitation remains: all standard CCD and CMOS sensors integrate over the dimensions of the plenoptic function as they convert photons into electrons; in the process, all visual information is irreversibly lost, except for a two-dimensional, spatially-varying subset — the common photograph. In this state of the art report, we review approaches that optically encode the dimensions of the plenoptic function transcending those captured by traditional photography and reconstruct the recorded information computationally.