Real-time implementation of Gaussian image blending in a spherical light field camera

Panoptic is a custom spherical light field camera used as a polydioptric system where imagers are distributed over a spherical geometry, each having its own vision of the surrounding and a distinct focal plane. The spherical light field camera records light information from any direction around its center. A novel Gaussian blending technique is presented for vision reconstruction of a virtual observer located inside the spherical geometry of this camera. This blending technique improves the output quality of the reconstructed image with respect to ordinary stitching techniques and simpler image blending algorithms. A hardware architecture based on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) with the real-time implementation of the Gaussian blending algorithm using the spherical light field camera is presented, along with the imaging results.