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SPIE Quantum Technologies

Correlation plenoptic imaging with entangled photons

Milena D’Angelo, Augusto Garuccio, Francesco Vincenzo Pepe, Ivano Ruo Berchera, Giuliano Scarcelli, Francesco Di Lena, Alessio Avella

Published May 21, 2018• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Plenoptic imaging (PI) is an optical technique to perform three-dimensional imaging in a single shot. It is enabled by the simultaneous measurement of both the location and the propagation direction of light in a given scene. Despite being very useful for extending the depth of field, such technique entails a strong trade- off between spatial and angular resolution. This makes the resolution and the maximum achievable depth of focus inversely proportional; hence, resolution cannot be diffraction-limited. We have recently proposed a new procedure, called Correlation Plenoptic Imaging (CPI), to overcome such fundamental limits by collecting plenoptic information through intensity correlation measurement. Using two correlated beams, from either a chaotic or an entangled photon source, we perform imaging in one arm and simultaneously obtain the angular information in the other arm. In this paper, we discuss the case in which the two correlated beams of light are generated by spontaneous parametric down-conversion. We review the principles of CPI with entangled photons and discuss its resolution and depth-of-field limits.

DOI
10.1117/12.2307836

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Plenoptic imaging (PI) is an optical technique to perform three-dimensional imaging in a single shot. It is enabled by the simultaneous measurement of both the location and the propagation direction of light in a given scene. Despite being very useful for extending the depth of field, such technique entails a strong trade- off between spatial and angular resolution. This makes the resolution and the maximum achievable depth of focus inversely proportional; hence, resolution cannot be diffraction-limited. We have recently proposed a new procedure, called Correlation Plenoptic Imaging (CPI), to overcome such fundamental limits by collecting plenoptic information through intensity correlation measurement. Using two correlated beams, from either a chaotic or an entangled photon source, we perform imaging in one arm and simultaneously obtain the angular information in the other arm. In this paper, we discuss the case in which the two correlated beams of light are generated by spontaneous parametric down-conversion. We review the principles of CPI with entangled photons and discuss its resolution and depth-of-field limits.
Plenoptic imaging is a novel optical technique for three-dimensional imaging in a single shot. It is enabled by the simultaneous measurement of both the location and the propagation direction of light in a given scene. In the standard approach, the maximum spatial and angular resolutions are inversely proportional, and so are the resolution and the maximum achievable depth of focus of the 3D image. We have recently proposed a method to overcome such fundamental limits by combining plenoptic imaging with an intriguing correlation remote-imaging technique: ghost imaging. Here, we theoretically demonstrate that correlation plenoptic imaging can be effectively achieved by exploiting the position-momentum entanglement characterizing spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) photon pairs. As a proof-of-principle demonstration, we shall show that correlation plenoptic imaging with entangled photons may enable the refocusing of an out-of-focus image at the same depth of focus of a standard plenoptic device, but without sacrificing diffraction-limited image resolution.
Traditional optical imaging is characterized by the typical trade-off between resolution and depth of field (DOF). In order to increase resolution, high numerical apertures (NA) are needed, but the associated large angular uncertainty results in a limited range of depths that can be put in sharp focus. Plenoptic imaging (PI) is a promising optical modality that simultaneously captures the location and the propagation direction of light in order to enable refocusing of the acquired images. Thanks to its ability to simultaneously acquire multi-perspective images, plenoptic imaging is one of the most promising technologies for 3D imaging. However, the improvement offered by standard plenoptic imaging is practical rather than fundamental: the increased DOF leads to a proportional reduction of the resolution well above the diffraction limit imposed by the lens NA. We have recently demonstrated that the intrinsic correlation of both chaotic light and entangled photons enables pushing plenoptic imaging to its fundamental limits of both resolution and DOF. In this paper we demonstrate correlation plenoptic imaging (CPI) of a double slit and present the comparison between theoretical prediction and experimental images.
Plenoptic Imaging (PI) is a novel optical technique for achieving tridimensional imaging in a single shot. In conventional PI, a microlens array is inserted in the native image plane and the sensor array is moved behind the microlenses. On the one hand, the microlenses act as imaging pixels to reproduce the image of the scene; on the other hand, each microlens reproduces on the sensor array an image of the camera lens, thus providing the angular information associated with each imaging pixel. The recorded propagation direction is exploited, in post- processing, to computationally retrace the geometrical light path, thus enabling the refocusing of different planes within the scene, the extension of the depth of field of the acquired image, as well as the 3D reconstruction of the scene. However, a trade-off between spatial and angular resolution is built in the standard plenoptic imaging process. We demonstrate that the second-order spatio-temporal correlation properties of light can be exploited to overcome this fundamental limitation. Using two correlated beams, from either a chaotic or an entangled photon source, we can perform imaging in one arm and simultaneously obtain the angular information in the other arm. In fact, we show that the second order correlation function possesses plenoptic imaging properties (i.e., it encodes both spatial and angular information), and is thus characterized by a key re-focusing and 3D imaging capability. From a fundamental standpoint, the plenoptic application is the first situation where the counterintuitive properties of correlated systems are effectively used to beat intrinsic limits of standard imaging systems. From a practical standpoint, our protocol can dramatically enhance the potentials of PI, paving the way towards its promising applications.
We introduce a new generation of 3D imaging devices based on quantum plenoptic imaging. Position-momentum entanglement and photon number correlations are exploited to provide a scan-free 3D image after post-processing of the collected light intensity signal. We explore the steps toward designing and implementing quantum plenop- tic cameras with dramatically improved performances, unattainable in standard plenoptic cameras, such as diffraction-limited resolution, large depth of focus, and ultra-low noise. However, to make these new types of devices attractive to end-users, two main challenges need to be tackled: the reduction of the acquisition times, that for the commercially available high-resolution cameras would be from tens of seconds to a few minutes, and a speed-up in processing the large amount of data that are acquired, in order to retrieve 3D reconstructions or refocused 2D images. To address these challenges, we are employing high-resolution SPAD (single photon avalanche diode) arrays and high-performance low-level programming of ultra-fast electronics, combined with compressive sensing and quantum tomography algorithms, with the aim of reducing both the acquisition and the elaboration time by one or possibly two orders of magnitude. Moreover, in order to achieve the quantum limit and further increase the volumetric resolution beyond the Rayleigh diffraction limit, we explored dedicated pro- tocols based on quantum Fisher information. Finally, we discuss how this new generation of quantum plenoptic devices could be exploited in different fields of research, such as 3D microscopy and space imaging.