New Techniques in Computational Photography
Date: Monday Morning, October 13, 08:15 - 09:30
Location: San Diego Convention Center, Upper Level, Room 6D/E
Presented by
Marc Levoy, Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Abstract
Computational photography refers broadly to sensing strategies and algorithmic techniques that enhance or extend the capabilities of digital photography. The output of these techniques is an ordinary photograph, but one that could not have been taken by a traditional camera. Representative techniques include high dynamic range imaging, flash-noflash imaging, coded aperture and coded exposure imaging, photography under structured illumination, multi-perspective and panoramic stitching, digital photomontage, all-focus imaging, and light field imaging. Over the past five years, interest in this new field among researchers in the Computer Graphics and Computer Vision communities has soared. In this talk, I will survey the field of computational photography, summarizing some of its principal results as presented at recent graphics and vision conferences. In my own laboratory at Stanford, we have been building devices to capture light fields. These devices range in scale from large arrays of cameras to a handheld camera and microscopes whose photographs you can refocus after they are captured. I will summarize this work as well.
Speaker Biography
Marc Levoy is a Professor of Computer Science and (jointly) Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. He received a Bachelor’s and Master’s in Architecture from Cornell University in 1976 and 1978, and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1989. In the 1970’s Levoy worked on computer animation, developing an early computer-assisted cartoon animation system. This system was used by Hanna-Barbera Productions from 1983 until 1996 to produce The Flintstones, Scooby Doo, and other shows. In the 1980’s Levoy worked on volume rendering, a family of techniques for displaying sampled three-dimensional functions, for example computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance (MR) data. In the 1990’s he worked on technology and algorithms for digitizing three-dimensional objects. This led to the Digital Michelangelo Project, in which he and a team of researchers spent a year in Italy digitizing the statues of Michelangelo using laser scanners. His current interests include light field sensing and display, computational photography, and applications of computer graphics in microscopy and biology. Awards: Charles Goodwin Sands Medal for best undergraduate thesis (1976), National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator (1991), ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award (1996), ACM Fellow (2007).