Efficient and Accurate Disparity Estimation from MLA-Based Plenoptic Cameras

Microlens-array based plenoptic cameras capture the light field in a single shot, enabling new potential applications but also introducing additional challenges. A plenoptic image consists of thousand of microlens images. Estimating the disparity for each microlens allows to render conventional images, changing the perspective and the focal settings, and to reconstruct the three-dimensional geometry of the scene. The work includes a blur-aware calibration method to model plenoptic cameras, an optimization method to accurately select the best microlenses combination for disparity estimation, an overview of the different types of plenoptic cameras, an analysis of the disparity estimation algorithms, and a robust depth estimation approach for light field microscopy. The research led to the creation of a full framework for plenoptic cameras, which contains the implementation of the algorithms discussed in the work and datasets of both real and synthetic images for comparison, benchmarking and future research.