Fast and high-resolution light field acquisition using defocus modulation.

In the conventional microlens-array-based light field imaging system, there is a trade-off between the angular and spatial resolutions. Light field reconstruction from images captured by focal plane sweeping, such as light field moment imaging (LFMI) and light field reconstruction with back projection (LFBP), can achieve high transverse resolution comparable to the modern camera sensor. However, the acquisition of a series of focal plane sweeping images along the optical axis is time consuming and requires fine alignment. Furthermore, different focal-plane-based light field reconstruction techniques require images with different characteristics. To solve these problems, we present an efficient approach for fast light field acquisition with precise focal plane sweeping capture by defocus modulation, rather than mechanical movement. Also, we verify the validity and the improvement of our system. With the controllable point spread function, we can capture images for light field reconstruction with both LFMI and LFBP. Otherwise, we quantitatively compare the two methods using images captured with the proposed systems.