Holographic light field imaging device and method of using the same

A holographic light field imaging device, comprising:

• at least one compression array;
• at least one image sensor;
• at least one housing;
• wherein said at least one compression array comprises one or more encoding masks, one or more dielectric spacers, a diffuser, and a refractive surface;
• wherein light striking said refractive surface creates an incident light field;
• wherein said incident light field is passed through said one or more encoding masks, said one or more dielectric spacers, and said diffuser, such that said incident light field is optically reduced from a four-dimension representation to a two-dimension representation, such that a dimensionally-reduced light field is created;
• wherein said refractive surface comprises a locally-positive curvature to increase a spatial entropy of said dimensionally-reduced light field;
• wherein said diffuser scatters said dimensionally-reduced light field in a substantially random manner, such that a diffused and dimensionally-reduced light field is created;
• wherein said image sensor comprises a relay lens and a digital light sensor;
• wherein said relay lens relays said diffused and dimensionally-reduced light field to said digital light sensor;
• wherein said housing substantially prevents stray light from being relayed to said digital light sensor;
• wherein said two-dimension representation of said diffused and dimensionally-reduced light field is recorded by said digital light sensor, such that one or more reduced two-dimensional entropic images are created, each of the one or more reduced two-dimensional entropic images encoding a representation of the incident light field;
• and
• wherein said one or more reduced two-dimensional entropic images are processed by a computing device, which comprises a reconstruction algorithm that inverts said one or more reduced two-dimensional entropic images to reconstruct said incident light field.

A holographic light field imaging device, comprising:

• at least one compression array comprising a shuffling element and a projection element;
• at least one image sensor;
• wherein light striking said at least one compression array creates an incident light field, wherein the shuffling element is configured to shuffle the incident light field between angular and spatial dimensions of the incident light field, and wherein the compression array is further configured to scramble the incident light field;
• wherein said incident light field is passed through said projection element of said at least one compression array, such that said incident light field is optically reduced from a four-dimension representation to a two-dimension representation, such that a dimensionally-reduced light field is created;
• and
• wherein said two-dimension representation of said dimensionally-reduced light field is recorded by said image sensor, such that one or more reduced two-dimensional entropic images are created, each of the one or more reduced two-dimensional entropic images encoding the incident light field.