Emulation of X-ray Light-Field Cameras

Abstract

X-ray plenoptic cameras acquire multi-view X-ray transmission images in a single exposure (light-field). Their development is challenging: designs have appeared only recently, and they are still affected by important limitations. Concurrently, the lack of available real X-ray light-field data hinders dedicated algorithmic development. Here, we present a physical emulation setup for rapidly exploring the parameter space of both existing and conceptual camera designs. This will assist and accelerate the design of X-ray plenoptic imaging solutions, and provide a tool for generating unlimited real X-ray plenoptic data. We also demonstrate that X-ray light-fields allow for reconstructing sharp spatial structures in three-dimensions (3D) from single-shot data.

Towards X-ray Plenoptic Imaging: Emulation with a Laboratory X-ray Scanner

“…In [5], we first presented an emulation scheme that allows reproducing the X-ray light-field acquired by a hypothetical X-ray plenoptic camera, before even purchasing the optics. The single-shot acquisition is mechanically emulated with a flexible X-ray laboratory scanner [6], by moving the source to sequential positions without the need for X-ray lenses.…”

“…where û and v are the unit vectors of the u and v axes, respectively, (δ u, δ v) is the angular resolution of the emulated setup, and p u and p v are integers. For more extensive details, we refer to [5]. In Fig.…”

Flexible Plenoptic X-ray Microscopy

“…To date, this method is still restricted to visible light, due to the complexity of using X-ray optics. In the literature there can be found numerical simulations emulating the operating mode of an X-ray plenoptic system with limited-angle tomography setups [12,13]. A preliminary experimental demonstration of plenoptic X-ray imaging was performed by Sowa et al in so-called multipoint projection geometry [14,15].…”

Towards soft X-ray imaging: results in plasma-based lasers and plenoptic imaging

“…A physical emulation setup for all the aforementioned types of X-ray LF cameras was developed at CWI [135]. It is based on a flexible CT scanner (FleX-Ray, [22]) with automatic source and detector positioning which can mechanically simulate a plenoptic acquisition process by means of sequentially moving the X-ray source.…”