Correlation Plenoptic Imaging between Arbitrary Planes

TL;DR

This paper introduces a correlation plenoptic imaging method that achieves diffraction-limited resolution and significantly increased depth of field by measuring second-order light correlations between arbitrary planes, applicable to chaotic and entangled light.

Contribution

It presents a novel correlation-based plenoptic imaging technique that allows flexible focusing and enhanced depth of field without sacrificing resolution, advancing current imaging capabilities.

Findings

Depth of field increased by a factor of 3 over previous protocols.

Achieves diffraction-limited resolution at the diffraction limit.

Compatible with chaotic and entangled photon illumination.

Abstract

We propose a novel method to perform plenoptic imaging at the diffraction limit by measuring second-order correlations of light between two reference planes, arbitrarily chosen, within the tridimensional scene of interest. We show that for both chaotic light and entangled-photon illumination, the protocol enables to change the focused planes, in post-processing, and to achieve an unprecedented combination of image resolution and depth of field. In particular, the depth of field results larger by a factor 3 with respect to previous correlation plenoptic imaging protocols, and by an order of magnitude with respect to standard imaging, while the resolution is kept at the diffraction limit. The results lead the way towards the development of compact designs for correlation plenoptic imaging devices based on chaotic light, as well as high-SNR plenoptic imaging devices based on entangled photon illumination, thus contributing to make correlation plenoptic imaging effectively competitive with commercial plenoptic devices.