Light field super resolution through controlled micro-shifts of light field sensor

Light field cameras presents new capabilities, such as post-capture refocusing and aperture control, through capturing directional and spatial distribution of light rays in space. Among different light field camera implementations, micro-lens array based light field cameras is a cost-effective and compact approach to capture light field. One drawback of the micro-lens array based light field cameras is low spatial resolution due to the fact that a single sensor is shared to capture both spatial and angular information. To address the low spatial resolution issue, we present a light field imaging approach that captures and fuses multiple light fields to improve the spatial resolution. For each capture, the light field sensor is shifted in fractional micro-lens steps by means of an XY stage for optimal performance.