A Digital Gigapixel Large-Format Tile-Scan Camera

Emerging applications in virtual museums, cultural-heritage projects, and digital art preservation require high-quality, high-resolution imaging of objects with fine structure, shape, and texture. Large-format digital photography can provide such imaging. However, such photography presents unique challenges, particularly sensor-lens mismatch and extended depth of field. A new digital tile-scan large-format camera can acquire high-quality, high-resolution images of static scenes. It employs unique calibration techniques and a novel but simple algorithm for focal-stack processing of very large images with significant magnification variations. The camera automatically collects a set of overlapping focal stacks and processes them into a single high-resolution and extended-depth-of-field image. © 2006 IEEE.