Multipath mitigation for time of flight system

A method of separating a direct component of light collected by a time of flight (ToF) detector from a global component of light collected by the ToF detector, the method comprising:

• acquiring k images, k being two or more, represented by k matrices in response to illuminating a target with a light source using a first spatial pattern at k different modulation frequencies;
• acquiring an additional k+1th image represented by an additional matrix in response to illuminating the target with the light source using a second spatial pattern, the second spatial pattern being different than the first spatial pattern;
• generate a denoising coefficient matrix based on a kernel matrix applied to each of the k+1 images;
• and
• applying the denoising coefficient to the two or more matrices and the additional k+1th matrix and to determine one or more parameters of the direct component of light and the global component of light based on analysis of the three or more matrices and the additional matrix.

A physical article of manufacture including one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media, encoding computer-executable instructions for executing on a computer system a computer process, the computer process comprising:

• acquiring k images, k being two or more, represented by k matrices in response to illuminating a target with a light source using a first spatial pattern at k different modulation frequencies;
• acquiring an additional k+1th image represented by an additional matrix in response to illuminating the target with the light source using a second spatial pattern, the second spatial pattern being different than the first spatial pattern;
• generating a denoising coefficient matrix based on a kernel matrix applied to each of the k+1 images;
• and
• applying the denoising coefficient to the two or more matrices and the additional k+1th matrix and to determine one or more parameters of the direct component of light and the global component of light based on analysis of the three or more matrices and the additional matrix.