Re-Calibration and Lens Array Area Detection for Accurate Extraction of Elemental Image Array in Three-Dimensional Integral Imaging

This paper presents a new method for extracting an elemental image array in three-dimensional (3D) integral imaging. To reconstruct 3D images in integral imaging, as the first step, a method is required to accurately extract an elemental image array from a raw captured image. Thus, several methods have been discussed to extract an elemental image array. However, the accuracy is sometimes degraded due to inaccurate edge detection, image distortions, optical misalignment, and so on. Especially, small pixel errors can deteriorate the performance of an integral imaging system with a lens array. To overcome the problem, we propose a postprocessing method for the accurate extraction of an elemental image array. Our method is a unified version of an existing method and proposed postprocessing techniques. The proposed postprocessing consists of re-calibration and lens array area detection. Our method reuses the results from an existing method, and it then improves the results via the proposed postprocessing techniques. To evaluate the proposed method, we perform optical experiments for 3D objects and provide the resulting images. The experimental results indicate that the proposed postprocessing techniques improve an existing method for extracting an elemental image array in integral imaging. Therefore, we expect the proposed techniques to be applied to various applications of integral imaging systems