Wavefront analysis for plenoptic camera imaging

The plenoptic camera is a single lens stereo camera which can retrieve the direction of light rays while detecting their intensity distribution. In this paper, to reveal more truths of plenoptic camera imaging, we present the wavefront analysis for the plenoptic camera imaging from the angle of physical optics but not from the ray tracing model of geometric optics. Specifically, the wavefront imaging model of a plenoptic camera is analyzed and simulated by scalar diffraction theory and the depth estimation is redescribed based on physical optics. We simulate a set of raw plenoptic images of an object scene, thereby validating the analysis and derivations and the difference between the imaging analysis methods based on geometric optics and physical optics are also shown in simulations.