High Resolution Image Acquisition Methods Using Multiple Cameras

Abstract

We previously developed a signal-processing-based high-resulution image acquisition scheme using two cameras. This approach produces a high-resolution image by integrating two image taken with two cameras. The integration process has two stages : registration and reconstruction. When the two cameras have the same pixel aperture, however, obtaining spatially uniform resolution improvement requires severe limitations both in the arrangement of the cameras and in the geometrical configuration of the scene.
To overcome this disadvantage, this paper introduces two methods : one for reducing noise and the other for improving resulution. The noise reduction method diminishes noise instead of improving resolution by the integration ; the resolution improvement method uses multiple cameras with different pixel apertures. Both methods always provide spatially uniform improvements. We also present an integration algorithm that iteratively performs the registration stage and the reconstruction stage alternately. Furthermore, we introduce a brightness retouch operation that is indispensable in using the alternately iterative algorithm.