3D Scene Inference from Transient Histograms
This work addresses the challenge of affordable 3D imaging for mobile and budget-limited devices, offering a novel approach but with incremental improvements over existing time-resolved methods.
The authors tackled the problem of 3D scene reconstruction using low-cost, time-resolved image sensors with minimal pixels, such as one pixel, by analyzing transient histograms from pulsed light illumination. They demonstrated that plane estimation can be done from a single transient and depth maps from a few more, with proof-of-concept hardware prototypes for compact applications.
Time-resolved image sensors that capture light at pico-to-nanosecond timescales were once limited to niche applications but are now rapidly becoming mainstream in consumer devices. We propose low-cost and low-power imaging modalities that capture scene information from minimal time-resolved image sensors with as few as one pixel. The key idea is to flood illuminate large scene patches (or the entire scene) with a pulsed light source and measure the time-resolved reflected light by integrating over the entire illuminated area. The one-dimensional measured temporal waveform, called \emph{transient}, encodes both distances and albedoes at all visible scene points and as such is an aggregate proxy for the scene's 3D geometry. We explore the viability and limitations of the transient waveforms by themselves for recovering scene information, and also when combined with traditional RGB cameras. We show that plane estimation can be performed from a single transient and that using only a few more it is possible to recover a depth map of the whole scene. We also show two proof-of-concept hardware prototypes that demonstrate the feasibility of our approach for compact, mobile, and budget-limited applications.