Holographic light field imaging device and method of using the same

Abstract

A holographic light field imaging device and method of using the same. The holographic light field imaging device may optically compress the light field into a lower-dimensional, coded representation for algorithmic reconstruction by transforming the light field in a known, calculable way. The resulting wavefront may be optically compressed before capture wherein the compression may later be reversed via software algorithm, recovering a representation of the original light field.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A holographic light field imaging device, comprising:
 at least one compression array;   at least one image sensor;   wherein said at least one compression array comprises one or more encoding masks and a first surface;   wherein light striking said first surface creates an incident light field;   wherein said incident light field is passed through said one or more encoding masks, such that said incident light field is reduced from a four-dimension representation to a two-dimension representation, such that a dimensionally-reduced light field is created;   wherein said two-dimension representation of said dimensionally-reduced light field is recorded by said image sensor, such that one or more reduced two-dimensional images are created; and   wherein said one or more reduced two-dimensional images are processed by a computing device, which comprises a reconstruction algorithm that inverts said one or more reduced two-dimensional images to reconstruct said incident light field.