Content-Based Depth Estimation in Focused Plenoptic Camera

Depth estimation in focused plenoptic camera is a critical step for most applications of this technology and poses interesting challenges, as this estimation is content based. We present an iterative algorithm, content adaptive, that exploits the redundancy found in focused plenoptic camera captured images. Our algorithm determines for each point its depth along with a measure of reliability allowing subsequent enhancements of spatial resolution of the depth map. We remark that the spatial resolution of the recovered depth corresponds to discrete values of depth in the captured scene to which we refer as slices. Moreover, each slice has a different depth and will allow extraction of different spatial resolutions of depth, depending on the scene content being present in that slice along with occluding areas. Interestingly, as focused plenoptic camera is not theoretically limited in spatial resolution, we show that the recovered spatial resolution is depth related, and as such, rendering of a focused plenoptic image is content dependent.