Apparatus and method for acquiring and combining images of a scene with multiple optical characteristics at multiple resolutions

Abstract

A camera system acquires multiple optical characteristics at multiple resolutions of a scene. The camera system includes multiple optical elements arranged as a tree having a multiple of nodes connected by edges. the nodes represent optical elements sharing a single optical center, and the edges representing light paths between the nodes. The tree has the following structure: a single root node acquiring a plenoptic field originating from a scene; nodes with a single child node represent filters, lenses, apertures, and shutters; nodes with multiple child nodes represent beam splitters and leaf nodes represent imaging sensors. Furthermore, a length of the light paths from the roof node to each leaf nodes can be equal.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.