A spectral analysis for light field rendering

Image based rendering using the plenoptic function is an efficient technique for re-rendering at different viewpoints. We study the sampling and reconstruction problem of plenoptic function as a multidimensional sampling problem. The spectral support of plenoptic function is found to be an important quantity in the efficient sampling and reconstruction of such a function. A spectral analysis for the light field, a 4D plenoptic function, is performed. Its spectrum, as a function of the depth function of the scene, is then derived. This result enables us to estimate the spectral support of the light field given some prior estimate of the depth function. Results using a piecewise constant depth model show significant improvement in rendering of the light field images. The design of the reconstruction filter is also discussed.