Light Transport Refocusing for Unknown Scattering Medium

Abstract

In this paper we propose a new light transport refocusing method for depth estimation as well as for investigation inside scattering media with unknown scattering properties. Propagated visible light rays through scattering media are utilized in our proposed refocusing method. We use 2D light source to illuminate the scattering media and 2D image sensor for capturing transported rays. The proposed method that uses 4D light transport can clearly visualize shallow depth, as well as deep depth plane of the medium. We apply our light transport refocusing method for depth estimation using conventional depth-from-focus method and for clear visualization by descattering the light rays passing through the medium. To evaluate the effectiveness we have done experiments using acrylic and milk-water type scattering medium in various optical and geometrical conditions. Finally, we show up the results of depth estimation and clear visualization, as well as with numeric evaluation.