Compressive Light Field Imaging and Display Systems

Professor Gordon Wetzstein
Assistant Professor, Stanford University
Given on: Nov. 6th, 2014
Venue: Packard 101
Time: 4:15pm to 5:15pm

Abstract

With rapid advances in optical fabrication, digital processing power, and computational perception, a new generation of display technology is emerging: compressive displays exploring the co-design of optical elements and computational processing while taking particular characteristics of the human visual system into account. We will review advances in this field and give an outlook on next-generation compressive display and imaging technology. In contrast to conventional technology, compressive displays aim for a joint-design of optics, electronics, and computational processing that together exploit compressibility of the presented data. For instance, light fields show the same 3D scene from different perspectives - all these images are very similar and therefore compressible. By combining displays that use multilayer architectures or directional backlighting combined with optimal light field factorizations, limitations of existing devices, for instance resolution, depth of field, and field of view, can be overcome. In addition to light field display and projection, we will discuss a variety of technologies for compressive super-resolution and high dynamic range image display as well as compressive light field imaging and microscopy.

Biography

Prior to joining Stanford University's Electrical Engineering Department as an Assistant Professor in 2014, Gordon Wetzstein was a Research Scientist in the Camera Culture Group at the MIT Media Lab. His research focuses on computational imaging, microscopy, and display systems as well as computational light transport. At the intersection of computer graphics, machine vision, optics, scientific computing, and perception, this research has a wide range of applications in next-generation consumer electronics, scientific imaging, human-computer interaction, remote sensing, and many other areas. Gordon's cross-disciplinary approach to research has been funded by DARPA, NSF, Intel, Samsung, and other grants from industry sponsors and research councils. In 2006, Gordon graduated with Honors from the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany, and he received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia in 2011. His doctoral dissertation focuses on computational light modulation for image acquisition and display and won the Alain Fournier Ph.D. Dissertation Annual Award. He organized the IEEE 2012 and 2013 International Workshops on Computational Cameras and Displays, founded displayblocks.org as a forum for sharing computational display design instructions with the DIY community, and presented a number of courses on Computational Displays and Computational Photography at ACM SIGGRAPH. Gordon won the best paper awards at the International Conference on Computational Photography in 2011 and 2014 as well as a Laval Virtual Award in 2005.