Optical tomography from focus.

A model and a method providing a 3D reconstruction of a given translucent object from a series of image acquisitions performed with various focus tunings is proposed. The object is imaged by transmission; refraction, reflection and diffusion effects are neglected. It is modeled as a stack of translucent parallel slices and the acquisition process can be described by a set of linear equations. We propose an efficient inversion technique with O(n) complexity, allowing practical applications with a simple laptop computer in a very reasonable time. Examples of results obtained with a simulated 3D translucent object are presented and discussed.