We propose to add an optical component in front of a conventional camera to improve depth estimation performance of Depth from Defocus (DFD), an approach based on the relation between defocus blur and depth. The add-on is an afocal doublet, which adds chromatic aberration to the global system. This overcomes ambiguity and dead zone, which are the fundamental limitations of DFD with a conventional camera since the blur become unambiguous and measurable for each depth. In this paper we present the principle of the add-on, a theoretical performance model and experiments on real prototype to illustrate the improvement of depth estimation performance with the proposed add-on.

Date Published: 24 May 2018
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 10677, Unconventional Optical Imaging, 1067709 (24 May 2018); doi: 10.1117/12.2309477

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10677:
Unconventional Optical Imaging
Corinne Fournier; Marc P. Georges; Gabriel Popescu, Editor(s)