Three-dimensional imaging and visualization of partially occluded objects using axially distributed stereo image sensing

In this Letter, we propose a multiperspective three-dimensional (3D) imaging system using axially distributed stereo image sensing. In this proposed method, the stereo camera is translated along its optical axis and multiple axial elemental image pairs for a 3D scene are collected. The captured elemental images are reconstructed in 3D using a computational reconstruction algorithm based on ray back-projection. The proposed method is applied to partially occluded object visualization. Optical experiments are performed to verify the approach. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America