The key, the researchers found, is to infer the angle of the light at each pixel, rather than directly measuring it (which standard image sensors and film would not be able to do). The team's solution is to take two images from the same camera position but focused at different depths. The slight differences between these two images provide enough information for a computer to mathematically create a brand-new image as if the camera had been moved to one side.
The researchers are calling their computational method "light-field moment imaging" - not to be confused with "light field cameras" (like the Lytro), which achieve similar effects using high-end hardware rather than computational processing.
Importantly, the technique offers a new and very accessible way to create 3D images of translucent materials, such as biological tissues.
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