Showing papers by "Wolfgang Heidrich published in 2018"

Hybrid optical-electronic convolutional neural networks with optimized diffractive optics for image classification.

Abstract: Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) excel in a wide variety of computer vision applications, but their high performance also comes at a high computational cost. Despite efforts to increase efficiency both algorithmically and with specialized hardware, it remains difficult to deploy CNNs in embedded systems due to tight power budgets. Here we explore a complementary strategy that incorporates a layer of optical computing prior to electronic computing, improving performance on image classification tasks while adding minimal electronic computational cost or processing time. We propose a design for an optical convolutional layer based on an optimized diffractive optical element and test our design in two simulations: a learned optical correlator and an optoelectronic two-layer CNN. We demonstrate in simulation and with an optical prototype that the classification accuracies of our optical systems rival those of the analogous electronic implementations, while providing substantial savings on computational cost.

End-to-end optimization of optics and image processing for achromatic extended depth of field and super-resolution imaging

Abstract: In typical cameras the optical system is designed first; once it is fixed, the parameters in the image processing algorithm are tuned to get good image reproduction. In contrast to this sequential design approach, we consider joint optimization of an optical system (for example, the physical shape of the lens) together with the parameters of the reconstruction algorithm. We build a fully-differentiable simulation model that maps the true source image to the reconstructed one. The model includes diffractive light propagation, depth and wavelength-dependent effects, noise and nonlinearities, and the image post-processing. We jointly optimize the optical parameters and the image processing algorithm parameters so as to minimize the deviation between the true and reconstructed image, over a large set of images. We implement our joint optimization method using autodifferentiation to efficiently compute parameter gradients in a stochastic optimization algorithm. We demonstrate the efficacy of this approach by applying it to achromatic extended depth of field and snapshot super-resolution imaging.

Deep End-to-End Time-of-Flight Imaging

Abstract: We present an end-to-end image processing framework for time-of-flight (ToF) cameras. Existing ToF image processing pipelines consist of a sequence of operations including modulated exposures, denoising, phase unwrapping and multipath interference correction. While this cascaded modular design offers several benefits, such as closed-form solutions and power-efficient processing, it also suffers from error accumulation and information loss as each module can only observe the output from its direct predecessor, resulting in erroneous depth estimates. We depart from a conventional pipeline model and propose a deep convolutional neural network architecture that recovers scene depth directly from dual-frequency, raw ToF correlation measurements. To train this network, we simulate ToF images for a variety of scenes using a time-resolved renderer, devise depth-specific losses, and apply normalization and augmentation strategies to generalize this model to real captures. We demonstrate that the proposed network can efficiently exploit the spatio-temporal structures of ToF frequency measurements, and validate the performance of the joint multipath removal, denoising and phase unwrapping method on a wide range of challenging scenes.

Aerial path planning for urban scene reconstruction: a continuous optimization method and benchmark

Abstract: Small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are ideal capturing devices for high-resolution urban 3D reconstructions using multi-view stereo. Nevertheless, practical considerations such as safety usually mean that access to the scan target is often only available for a short amount of time, especially in urban environments. It therefore becomes crucial to perform both view and path planning to minimize flight time while ensuring complete and accurate reconstructions.In this work, we address the challenge of automatic view and path planning for UAV-based aerial imaging with the goal of urban reconstruction from multi-view stereo. To this end, we develop a novel continuous optimization approach using heuristics for multi-view stereo reconstruction quality and apply it to the problem of path planning. Even for large scan areas, our method generates paths in only a few minutes, and is therefore ideally suited for deployment in the field.To evaluate our method, we introduce and describe a detailed benchmark dataset for UAV path planning in urban environments which can also be used to evaluate future research efforts on this topic. Using this dataset and both synthetic and real data, we demonstrate survey-grade urban reconstructions with ground resolutions of 1 cm or better on large areas (30 000 m2).

Space-time tomography for continuously deforming objects

Abstract: X-ray computed tomography (CT) is a valuable tool for analyzing objects with interesting internal structure or complex geometries that are not accessible with optical means. Unfortunately, tomographic reconstruction of complex shapes requires a multitude (often hundreds or thousands) of projections from different viewpoints. Such a large number of projections can only be acquired in a time-sequential fashion. This significantly limits the ability to use x-ray tomography for either objects that undergo uncontrolled shape change at the time scale of a scan, or else for analyzing dynamic phenomena, where the motion itself is under investigation. In this work, we present a non-parametric space-time tomographic method for tackling such dynamic settings. Through a combination of a new CT image acquisition strategy, a space-time tomographic image formation model, and an alternating, multi-scale solver, we achieve a general approach that can be used to analyze a wide range of dynamic phenomena. We demonstrate our method with extensive experiments on both real and simulated data.

Computational design of nanostructural color for additive manufacturing

Abstract: Additive manufacturing has recently seen drastic improvements in resolution, making it now possible to fabricate features at scales of hundreds or even dozens of nanometers, which previously required very expensive lithographic methods. As a result, additive manufacturing now seems poised for optical applications, including those relevant to computer graphics, such as material design, as well as display and imaging applications. In this work, we explore the use of additive manufacturing for generating structural colors, where the structures are designed using a fabrication-aware optimization process. This requires a combination of full-wave simulation, a feasible parameterization of the design space, and a tailored optimization procedure. Many of these components should be re-usable for the design of other optical structures at this scale. We show initial results of material samples fabricated based on our designs. While these suffer from the prototype character of state-of-the-art fabrication hardware, we believe they clearly demonstrate the potential of additive nanofabrication for structural colors and other graphics applications.

Super-Resolution and Sparse View CT Reconstruction

Abstract: We present a flexible framework for robust computed tomography (CT) reconstruction with a specific emphasis on recovering thin 1D and 2D manifolds embedded in 3D volumes. To reconstruct such structures at resolutions below the Nyquist limit of the CT image sensor, we devise a new 3D structure tensor prior, which can be incorporated as a regularizer into more traditional proximal optimization methods for CT reconstruction. As a second, smaller contribution, we also show that when using such a proximal reconstruction framework, it is beneficial to employ the Simultaneous Algebraic Reconstruction Technique (SART) instead of the commonly used Conjugate Gradient (CG) method in the solution of the data term proximal operator. We show empirically that CG often does not converge to the global optimum for tomography problem even though the underlying problem is convex. We demonstrate that using SART provides better reconstruction results in sparse-view settings using fewer projection images. We provide extensive experimental results for both contributions on both simulated and real data. Moreover, our code will also be made publicly available.

Coupled Fluid Density and Motion from Single Views

Abstract: We present a novel method to reconstruct a fluid's 3D density and motion based on just a single sequence of images. This is rendered possible by using powerful physical priors for this strongly under-determined problem. More specifically, we propose a novel strategy to infer density updates strongly coupled to previous and current estimates of the flow motion. Additionally, we employ an accurate discretization and depth-based regularizers to compute stable solutions. Using only one view for the reconstruction reduces the complexity of the capturing setup drastically and could even allow for online video databases or smart-phone videos as inputs. The reconstructed 3D velocity can then be flexibly utilized, e.g., for re-simulation, domain modification or guiding purposes. We will demonstrate the capacity of our method with a series of synthetic test cases and the reconstruction of real smoke plumes captured with a Raspberry Pi camera.

Depth and Transient Imaging with Compressive SPAD Array Cameras

Abstract: Time-of-flight depth imaging and transient imaging are two imaging modalities that have recently received a lot of interest. Despite much research, existing hardware systems are limited either in terms of temporal resolution or are prohibitively expensive. Arrays of Single Photon Avalanche Diodes (SPADs) promise to fill this gap by providing higher temporal resolution at an affordable cost. Unfortunately SPAD arrays are to date only available in relatively small resolutions. In this work we aim to overcome the spatial resolution limit of SPAD arrays by employing a compressive sensing camera design. Using a DMD and custom optics, we achieve an image resolution of up to 800A—400 on SPAD Arrays of resolution 64A—32. Using our new data fitting model for the time histograms, we suppress the noise while abstracting the phase and amplitude information, so as to realize a temporal resolution of a few tens of picoseconds.

Discriminative Transfer Learning for General Image Restoration

Abstract: Recently, several discriminative learning approaches have been proposed for effective image restoration, achieving convincing trade-off between image quality and computational efficiency. However, these methods require separate training for each restoration task (e.g., denoising, deblurring, demosaicing) and problem condition (e.g., noise level of input images). This makes it time-consuming and difficult to encompass all tasks and conditions during training. In this paper, we propose a discriminative transfer learning method that incorporates formal proximal optimization and discriminative learning for general image restoration. The method requires a single-pass discriminative training and allows for reuse across various problems and conditions while achieving an efficiency comparable to previous discriminative approaches. Furthermore, after being trained, our model can be easily transferred to new likelihood terms to solve untrained tasks, or be combined with existing priors to further improve image restoration quality.

Reconfigurable rainbow PIV for 3D flow measurement

Abstract: In recent years, 3D Particle Imaging Velocimetry (PIV) has become more and more attractive due to its ability to fully characterize various fluid flows. However, 3D fluid capture and velocity field reconstruction remain a challenging problem. A recent rainbow PIV system encodes depth into color and successfully recovers 3D particle trajectories, but it also suffers from a limited and fixed volume size, as well as a relatively low light efficiency. In this paper, we propose a reconfigurable rainbow PIV system that extends the volume size to a considerable range. We introduce a parallel double-grating system to improve the light efficiency for scalable rainbow generation. A varifocal encoded diffractive lens is designed to accommodate the size of the rainbow illumination, ranging from 15 mm to 50 mm. We also propose a truncated consensus ADMM algorithm to efficiently reconstruct particle locations. Our algorithm is 5x faster compared to the state-of-the-art. The reconstruction quality is also improved significantly for a series of density levels. Our method is demonstrated by both simulation and experimental results.

Megapixel adaptive optics: towards correcting large-scale distortions in computational cameras

Abstract: Adaptive optics has become a valuable tool for correcting minor optical aberrations in applications such as astronomy and microscopy. However, due to the limited resolution of both the wavefront sensing and the wavefront correction hardware, it has so far not been feasible to use adaptive optics for correcting large-scale waveform deformations that occur naturally in regular photography and other imaging applications. In this work, we demonstrate an adaptive optics system for regular cameras. We achieve a significant improvement in focus for large wavefront distortions by improving upon a recently developed high resolution coded wavefront sensor, and combining it with a spatial phase modulator to create a megapixel adaptive optics system with unprecedented capability to sense and correct large distortions.

Focal sweep imaging with multi-focal diffractive optics

Abstract: Depth-dependent defocus results in a limited depth-of-field in consumer-level cameras. Computational imaging provides alternative solutions to resolve all-in-focus images with the assistance of designed optics and algorithms. In this work, we extend the concept of focal sweep from refractive optics to diffractive optics, where we fuse multiple focal powers onto one single element. In contrast to state-of-the-art sweep models, ours can generate better-conditioned point spread function (PSF) distributions along the expected depth range with drastically shortened (40%) sweep distance. Further by encoding axially asymmetric PSFs subject to color channels, and then sharing sharp information across channels, we preserve details as well as color fidelity. We prototype two diffractive imaging systems that work in the monochromatic and RGB color domain. Experimental results indicate that the depth-of-field can be significantly extended with fewer artifacts remaining after the deconvolution.

Coupled Fluid Density and Motion from Single Views

Abstract: We present a novel method to reconstruct a fluid's 3D density and motion based on just a single sequence of images. This is rendered possible by using powerful physical priors for this strongly under-determined problem. More specifically, we propose a novel strategy to infer density updates strongly coupled to previous and current estimates of the flow motion. Additionally, we employ an accurate discretization and depth-based regularizers to compute stable solutions. Using only one view for the reconstruction reduces the complexity of the capturing setup drastically and could even allow for online video databases or smart-phone videos as inputs. The reconstructed 3D velocity can then be flexibly utilized, e.g., for re-simulation, domain modification or guiding purposes. We will demonstrate the capacity of our method with a series of synthetic test cases and the reconstruction of real smoke plumes captured with a Raspberry Pi camera.

UAV Pathplanning Dataset & Benchmark

Abstract: This dataset consists of trajectories, proxy meshes and images generated for pathplanning on real and synthetic scenes. It includes a benchmarking tool allowing new trajectories to output camera images for reconstruction. The tool also allows error and completleness comparison with the groundtruth models and reconstructions

Imaging with SPADs and DMDs: Seeing through Diffraction-Photons

Abstract: This paper addresses the problem of imaging in the presence of diffraction-photons. Diffraction-photons arise from the low contrast ratio of DMDs ($\sim\,1000:1$), and very much degrade the quality of images captured by SPAD-based systems. Herein, a joint illumination-deconvolution scheme is designed to overcome diffraction-photons, enabling the acquisition of intensity and depth images. Additionally, a proof-of-concept experiment is conducted to demonstrate the viability of the designed scheme. It is shown that by co-designing the illumination and deconvolution phases of imaging, one can substantially overcome diffraction-photons.