Light field panorama by a plenoptic camera

Consumer-grade plenoptic camera Lytro draws a lot of interest from both academic and industrial world. However its low resolution in both spatial and angular domain prevents it from being used for fine and detailed light field acquisition. This paper proposes to use a plenoptic camera as an image scanner and perform light field stitching to increase the size of the acquired light field data. We consider a simplified plenoptic camera model comprising a pinhole camera moving behind a thin lens. Based on this model, we describe how to perform light field acquisition and stitching under two different scenarios: by camera translation or by camera translation and rotation. In both cases, we assume the camera motion to be known. In the case of camera translation, we show how the acquired light fields should be resampled to increase the spatial range and ultimately obtain a wider field of view. In the case of camera translation and rotation, the camera motion is calculated such that the light fields can be directly stitched and extended in the angular domain. Simulation results verify our approach and demonstrate the potential of the motion model for further light field applications such as registration and super-resolution.