Blind Time-of-Flight Imaging: Sparse Deconvolution on the Continuum with Unknown Kernels

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Guo, Ruiming, Bhandari, Ayush
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Guo, Ruiming
Bhandari, Ayush
author_facet Guo, Ruiming
Bhandari, Ayush
contents In recent years, computational Time-of-Flight (ToF) imaging has emerged as an exciting and a novel imaging modality that offers new and powerful interpretations of natural scenes, with applications extending to 3D, light-in-flight, and non-line-of-sight imaging. Mathematically, ToF imaging relies on algorithmic super-resolution, as the back-scattered sparse light echoes lie on a finer time resolution than what digital devices can capture. Traditional methods necessitate knowledge of the emitted light pulses or kernels and employ sparse deconvolution to recover scenes. Unlike previous approaches, this paper introduces a novel, blind ToF imaging technique that does not require kernel calibration and recovers sparse spikes on a continuum, rather than a discrete grid. By studying the shared characteristics of various ToF modalities, we capitalize on the fact that most physical pulses approximately satisfy the Strang-Fix conditions from approximation theory. This leads to a new mathematical formulation for sparse super-resolution. Our recovery approach uses an optimization method that is pivoted on an alternating minimization strategy. We benchmark our blind ToF method against traditional kernel calibration methods, which serve as the baseline. Extensive hardware experiments across different ToF modalities demonstrate the algorithmic advantages, flexibility and empirical robustness of our approach. We show that our work facilitates super-resolution in scenarios where distinguishing between closely spaced objects is challenging, while maintaining performance comparable to known kernel situations. Examples of light-in-flight imaging and light-sweep videos highlight the practical benefits of our blind super-resolution method in enhancing the understanding of natural scenes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_00893
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Blind Time-of-Flight Imaging: Sparse Deconvolution on the Continuum with Unknown Kernels
Guo, Ruiming
Bhandari, Ayush
Image and Video Processing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Information Theory
Signal Processing
62H35, 68U99, 78A46, 94A12
In recent years, computational Time-of-Flight (ToF) imaging has emerged as an exciting and a novel imaging modality that offers new and powerful interpretations of natural scenes, with applications extending to 3D, light-in-flight, and non-line-of-sight imaging. Mathematically, ToF imaging relies on algorithmic super-resolution, as the back-scattered sparse light echoes lie on a finer time resolution than what digital devices can capture. Traditional methods necessitate knowledge of the emitted light pulses or kernels and employ sparse deconvolution to recover scenes. Unlike previous approaches, this paper introduces a novel, blind ToF imaging technique that does not require kernel calibration and recovers sparse spikes on a continuum, rather than a discrete grid. By studying the shared characteristics of various ToF modalities, we capitalize on the fact that most physical pulses approximately satisfy the Strang-Fix conditions from approximation theory. This leads to a new mathematical formulation for sparse super-resolution. Our recovery approach uses an optimization method that is pivoted on an alternating minimization strategy. We benchmark our blind ToF method against traditional kernel calibration methods, which serve as the baseline. Extensive hardware experiments across different ToF modalities demonstrate the algorithmic advantages, flexibility and empirical robustness of our approach. We show that our work facilitates super-resolution in scenarios where distinguishing between closely spaced objects is challenging, while maintaining performance comparable to known kernel situations. Examples of light-in-flight imaging and light-sweep videos highlight the practical benefits of our blind super-resolution method in enhancing the understanding of natural scenes.
title Blind Time-of-Flight Imaging: Sparse Deconvolution on the Continuum with Unknown Kernels
topic Image and Video Processing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Information Theory
Signal Processing
62H35, 68U99, 78A46, 94A12
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.00893