Super-resolution in a defocused plenoptic camera: a wave-optics-based approach

Plenoptic cameras enable the capture of a light field with a single device. However, with traditional light field rendering procedures, they can provide only low-resolution two-dimensional images. Super-resolution is considered to overcome this drawback. In this study, we present a super-resolution method for the defocused plenoptic camera (Plenoptic 1.0), where the imaging system is modeled using wave optics principles and utilizing low-resolution depth information of the scene. We are particularly interested in super-resolution of in-focus and near in-focus scene regions, which constitute the most challenging cases. The simulation results show that the employed wave-optics model makes super-resolution possible for such regions as long as sufficiently accurate depth information is available. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America