Extraction of Distance Information with Nonlinear Correlation of Photon-Counting Integral Imaging

Integral imaging combined with photon-counting detection has been researched for three-dimensional information sensing under low-light-level conditions. This paper addresses the extraction of distance information with photon-counting integral imaging. The longitudinal distance to the object is obtained utilizing photon-counting elemental images. The pixel disparity is estimated by maximizing the nonlinear correlation of photocounts. The first- and second-order statistical properties of the nonlinear correlation are theoretically derived. In the experiments, these properties are verified by varying the mean number of photocounts in the scene. The average distance is compared to that from the intensity information, showing the robustness of the proposed system even at low photocounts.