In this paper, a tunable electro-optical iris with high transmittance, based on polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) material, and a relevant image enhancement method are combined for digital photography. Our device is controllable by adjusting the voltage and no mechanical and moving components are required so as to improve the stability. The experiments show that transmittance of light throughput is tunable from nearly 0% to 77% by gradually increasing driving voltage. The digital camera system using our PDLC iris can capture the high-contrast image in real-scene photography. To further improve the image quality, we develop an iterative image enhancement method that is able to improve the signal-to-noise ratio by ∼10 times and increase the image brightness simultaneously. The combination of the PDLC electro-optical device and a variant of the enhancement algorithm can also have the potential to be applied in optical imaging and sensing.
A depth camera prototype with high-transmittance off-axis dual electro-optical (DEO) irises is proposed. Our DEO irises are switchable through the polymer dispersed liquid crystal, and exhibit the advantages of low cost, easy fabrication, and higher transmittance compared to the traditional liquid crystal shutters. The transmittance of our device is near 75% when the driving voltage reaches about 30 V. The principle of depth measurement of our system is based on a pair of stereo images, which are captured through the left and right irises, respectively. The depth is calculated from the shifts of features between the two images. The DEO iris design, fabrication process, and depth camera prototype are demonstrated, and experimental results using our depth camera verify reliable performance for the depth measurement. Our DEO iris system therefore provides potential applications in depth sensing.
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