The Minimalist Camera

We present the minimalist camera (mincam), a design framework to capture the scene information with minimal resources and without constructing an image. The basic sensing unit of a mincam is a ‘mixel’ — an optical photo-detector that aggregates light from the entire scene linearly modulated by a static mask. We precompute a set of masks for a configuration of few mixels, such that they retain minimal information relevant to a task. We show how tasks such as tracking moving objects or determining a vehicle’s speed can be accomplished with a handful of mixels as opposed to the more than a million pixels used in traditional photography. Since mincams are passive, compact, low powered and inexpensive, they can potentially find applications in a broad range of scenarios.

[1]  M E Gehm,et al.  Static compressive tracking. , 2012, Optics express.

[2]  Stephen Lin,et al.  Coded Aperture Pairs for Depth from Defocus and Defocus Deblurring , 2011, International Journal of Computer Vision.

[3]  Faramarz Farahi,et al.  Active illumination single-pixel camera based on compressive sensing. , 2011, Applied optics.

[4]  Richard G. Baraniuk,et al.  The smashed filter for compressive classification and target recognition , 2007, Electronic Imaging.

[5]  Mark A Neifeld,et al.  Feature-specific imaging. , 2003, Applied optics.

[6]  Marc Levoy,et al.  Volume rendering using the Fourier projection-slice theorem , 1992 .

[7]  Graham M. Gibson,et al.  Single-pixel three-dimensional imaging with time-based depth resolution , 2016, Nature Communications.

[8]  M. Neifeld,et al.  Optical architectures for compressive imaging. , 2006, Applied optics.

[9]  Saibal Mukhopadhyay,et al.  Reconfigurable 96×128 active pixel sensor with 2.1µW/mm2 power generation and regulated multi-domain power delivery for self-powered imaging , 2016, ESSCIRC Conference 2016: 42nd European Solid-State Circuits Conference.

[10]  Richard G. Baraniuk,et al.  A new compressive imaging camera architecture using optical-domain compression , 2006, Electronic Imaging.

[11]  Amit Ashok,et al.  Compressive imaging system design using task-specific information. , 2008, Applied optics.

[12]  Mark R. Freeman,et al.  3D Computational Imaging with Single-Pixel Detectors , 2013 .

[13]  Ren Ng.  Fourier slice photography , 2005, ACM Trans. Graph..

[14]  Jianwei Ma,et al.  Single-Pixel Remote Sensing , 2009, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters.

[15]  Jingang Zhong,et al.  Single-pixel imaging by means of Fourier spectrum acquisition , 2015, Nature Communications.

[16]  M. Padgett,et al.  Fast full-color computational imaging with single-pixel detectors. , 2013, Optics express.

[17]  M. Mino,et al.  Improvement in the OTF of a Defocused Optical System Through the Use of Shaded Apertures. , 1971, Applied optics.

[18]  Ramesh Raskar,et al.  Dappled photography: mask enhanced cameras for heterodyned light fields and coded aperture refocusing , 2007, ACM Trans. Graph..

[19]  E E Fenimore,et al.  New family of binary arrays for coded aperture imaging. , 1989, Applied optics.

[20]  Ting Sun,et al.  Single-pixel imaging via compressive sampling , 2008, IEEE Signal Process. Mag..

[21]  E. Caroli,et al.  Coded aperture imaging in X- and gamma-ray astronomy , 1987 .

[22]  Shree K. Nayar,et al.  Towards Self-Powered Cameras , 2015, 2015 IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography (ICCP).

[23]  S. Nayar,et al.  What are good apertures for defocus deblurring? , 2009, 2009 IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography (ICCP).

[24]  Arijit Raychowdhury,et al.  A Light-Powered Smart Camera With Compressed Domain Gesture Detection , 2018, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology.

[25]  Shizhong Xie,et al.  High speed single-pixel imaging via time domain compressive sampling , 2014, 2014 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO) - Laser Science to Photonic Applications.

[26]  Ramesh Raskar,et al.  Coded exposure photography: motion deblurring using fluttered shutter , 2006, SIGGRAPH '06.

[27]  Ramesh Raskar,et al.  Lensless Imaging With Compressive Ultrafast Sensing , 2016, IEEE Transactions on Computational Imaging.

[28]  Michael E. Gehm,et al.  Static architecture for compressive motion detection in persistent, pervasive surveillance applications , 2010 .

[29]  Amit Ashok,et al.  Information optimal compressive sensing: static measurement design. , 2013, Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics, image science, and vision.

[30]  G. Skinner.  X-ray imaging with coded masks. , 1988, Scientific American.

[31]  Amit Ashok,et al.  Task-specific information for imaging system analysis. , 2007, Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics, image science, and vision.