Analysis and Compression of Plenoptic Camera Images with Zernike Polynomials

Capturing light field data with a plenoptic camera has been discussed extensively in the literature. However, recent improvements in digital imaging have made demonstration and commercialization of plenoptic cameras feasible. The raw images obtained with plenoptic cameras consist of an array of small circular images, each of which capture local spatial and trajectory information regarding the light rays incident on that point. Here, we seek to develop techniques for representing such images with a natural set of basis functions. In doing so, reconstruction of slices through the light field data, as well as image compression can be easily achieved.