In digital imaging systems, due to the nature of the optics involved, the depth of field is constricted in the field of view. Parts of the scene are in focus while others are defocused. Here, a framework of versatile data-driven application independent methods to extend the depth of field in digital imaging systems is presented. The principal contributions in this effort are the use of focal connectivity, the direct use of curvelets and features extracted by Empirical Mode Decomposition, namely Intrinsic Mode Images, for multifocus fusion. The input images are decomposed into focally connected components, peripheral and medial coefficients and intrinsic mode images depending on the approach and fusion is performed on extracted focal information, by relevant schema that allow emphasis of focused regions from each input image. The fused image unifies information from all focal planes, while maintaining the verisimilitude of the scene. The final output is an image where all focal volumes of the scene are in focus, as acquired by a pinhole camera with an infinitesimal depth of field. In order to validate the fusion performance of our method, we have compared our results with those of region-based and multiscale decomposition based fusion techniques. Several illustrative examples, supported by in depth objective comparisons are shown and various practical recommendations are made.

Title: Interactive Preview Renderer for Complex Camera Models Author: Bohumír Zámečník Department: Department of Software and Computer Science Education Supervisor: Dr. Alexander Wilkie Supervisor's e-mail address: alexander@wilkie.at Abstract: An interactive renderer was implemented that allows users to preview the effects of imaging with lenses, such as depth of field, bokeh (defocus highlights) and tilt-shift lens configurations. It is based on a state-of-the-art method which com- bines the power of GPU rasterization and ray tracing. Many models and interactive visualizations were created. A non-interactive simulation of a complex geometrical lens model has been made which is able to produce optical aberrations. Also a prototype implementation of recent fast spreading filters is available. A thorough summary of the principles of optical image formation, lens models and depth of field rendering methods used in computer graphics is given along with a comparison of the approaches and new insights. New possibilities of representing the behavior of complex lenses are suggested, which could be employed to accelerate the rendering. Keywords: image synthesis, camera models, depth of field, GPU, image-based ray tracing

散景是一種讓影像背景模糊化的拍攝視覺效果，這種拍攝視覺效果以往在攝影領域中都只停留在技術層次的討論，因此本研究希望去深入探討散景對於社會文化的影響，並且描繪出散景在攝影文化中的定位。 本研究採用質化深度訪談的方式，輔以文獻資料分析法，線上資料搜集整理分析，以及散景照片實驗等，透過四種類型的資料交叉對話，從散景的視覺認知及影像訊息控制開始談起，進而發掘出散景的文化意義及符號象徵，最後再探討如何透過散景的符號象徵去建構社會資本。 研究發現如下：(一) 散景透過影像的呈現來畫分出大眾攝影族群、(二) 散景造就人像鏡的神話建構、(三) 沙龍攝影文化的興衰、(四) 透過散景建構的社會資本、(五) 後製對散景的象徵符號及社會資本之解構。 本研究建議：(一)散景研究應該跳脫技術層面，拉高視野、(二) 意識到數位影像時代的散景影響層面擴大、(三) 影像文本分析應該留意容易被忽略的散景。

With arrival of affordable digital technology we are increasingly coming into contact with digital images. Cameras are no longer dedicated devices, but part of almost every mobile phone, PDA and laptop. This paper discusses methods for enhancing quality of digital images with focus on removing noise, creating high dynamic range (HDR) images and extending depth of field (DOF). It contains familiarization with technical means for acquiring digital image, explains origin of image noise. Further attention is drawn to HDR, from explaining the term, physical basis, difference between HDR sensing and HDR displaying, to survey and historical development of methods dealing with creating HDR images. The next part is explaining DOF when displaying, physical basis of this phenomenon and review of methods used for DOF extension. The paper mentions problem of acquiring images needed for solving given tasks and designs method for acquiring images. Using it a database of test images for each task was created. Part of the paper also deals with design of a program, that implements discussed methods, for solving the given tasks. With help of proposed class imgmap, quality of output images is improved, by modifying maps of input images. The paper describes methods, improvements, means of setting parameters and their effects on algorithms and control of program using proposed GUI. Finally, comparison with free software for extending DOF takes place. The proposed software provides at least comparable results, the correct setting of parameters for specific cases allows to achieve better properties of the resulting image. Time requirements of image processing are worse because designed software was not optimised.

The aim of this work is to introduce the principle of scanning in optical microscopy. This thesis deals with problem of parameters of display process and their influence on the results and measurements of these parameters. In detail there is analyzed the depth of field of the optical system and there are established some possibilities of theoretical and experimental determination. Part of this thesis is the realization of the measurement work place and program providing experimental depth of field based on different measurement methods. The conclusion is devoted to the practical part, which has the task to monitor settings and optical systems and their impact on depth of field.

One way of increasing 3D rendering performance is the use of foveated rendering. In this thesis a novel foveated rendering technique called gaze contingent depth of field tessellation (GC DOF tessellation) is proposed. Tessellation is the process of subdividing geometry to increase detail. The technique works by applying tessellation to all objects within the focal plane, gradually decreasing tessellation levels as applied blur increases. As the user moves their gaze the focal plane shifts and objects go from blurry to sharp at the same time as the fidelity of the object increases. This can help hide the pops that occur as objects change shape. The technique was evaluated in a user study with 32 participants. For the evaluated scene the technique helped reduce the number of primitives rendered by around 70 % and frame time by around 9 % compared to using full adaptive tessellation. The user study showed that as the level of blur increased the detection rate for pops decreased, suggesting that the technique could be used to hide pops that occur due to tessellation. However, further research is needed to solidify these findings. / Ett sätt att öka renderingsprestanda i 3D applikationer är att använda foveated rendering. I denna uppsats presenteras en ny foveated rendering-teknik som kallas gaze contingent depth of field tessellering (GC DOF tessellering). Tessellering är när geometri delas i mindre delar för att öka detaljrikedom. Tekniken fungerar genom att applicera tessellering på alla objekt i fokalplanet och gradvis minska tesselleringsnivåer när oskärpan ökar. När användaren flyttar sin blick så flyttas fokalplanet och suddiga objekt blir skarpa samtidigt som detaljrikedomen i objektet ökar. Det kan hjälpa till att dölja de ’pops’ som uppstår när objekt ändrar form. Tekniken utvärderades i en användarstudie med 32 del- tagare. I den utvärderade scenen visade sig tekniken minska antalet renderade primitiver med ca 70 % och minska renderingstiden med ca 9 % jämfört med att använda full adaptiv tessellering. Användarstudien visade att när oskärpa ökade så minskade antalet som sa sig se ’pops’, vilket tyder på att tekniken kan användas för att dölja de ’pops’ som uppstår på grund av tessellering. Det behövs dock ytterligare forskning för att säkerställa dessa fynd.

<p dir="ltr">Over the last few decades, three-dimensional (3D) optical imaging and sensing techniques have attracted much attention from both academia and industries. Owing to its capability of gathering more information than conventional 2D imaging, it has been successfully adopted in many applications on the macro scale which ranges from sub-meters to meters such as entertainment, commercial electronics, manufacturing, and construction. For example, the iPhone “FaceID” sensor is used for facial recognition, and the Microsoft Kinect is used to track body motion in video games. With recent advances in many technical fields, such as semiconductor packaging, additive manufacturing, and micro-robots, there is an increasing need for microscopic 3D imaging, and several techniques including interferometry, confocal microscopy, focus variation, and structured light have been developed and adopted in these industries. Among these techniques, the structured light 3D imaging technique is considered one of the most promising techniques for in-situ metrology, owing to its advantage of simple configuration and high measurement speed. However, several challenges must be addressed in employing the structured-light 3D imaging technique in these fields.</p><p dir="ltr">The first challenge is the limited measurement range caused by the limited depth of field (DOF). Given the necessity for large magnification in the microscopic structured light system, the DOF becomes notably shallow, especially when pin-hole lenses are adopted. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that the measured objects in the aforementioned industries could contain miniaturized features spanning a broad height range. To address this problem, we introduce the idea of the focus stacking technique, wherein the focused pixels gathered from various focus settings are merged to form an all-in-focus image, into the structured-light 3D imaging. We further developed a computational framework that utilizes the phase information and fringe contrast of the projected fringe patterns to mitigate the influence of object textures.</p><p dir="ltr">The second challenge is the 3D imaging speed. The 3D measurement speed is a crucial factor for in-situ applications. We improved the large DOF 3D imaging speed by reducing the required fringe images from two aspects: 1) We developed a calibration method for multifocus pin-hole mode, which can eliminate the necessity of the 2D image alignment. The conventional method based on circle patterns will be affected during the feature extraction process by the significant camera defocusing. In contrast, our proposed method is more robust since it uses virtual features extracted from a reconstructed white flat surface under a pre-calibrated focus setting. 2)We developed a phase unwrapping method with the assistance of the electrically tunable lens (ETL), which is an optical component we used to capture fringe images under various focus settings. The proposed phase unwrapping method leverages the focal plane position of each focus setting to estimate a rough depth map for the geometric-constraint phase unwrapping algorithm. By doing this, the method eliminates the limitation on the effective working depth range and becomes feasible in large DOF 3D imaging.</p><h4>Even with all previous methodologies, the efficiency of large DOF 3D imaging is still not high enough under certain circumstances. One of the major reasons is that we can still only use a series of pre-defined focus settings to run the focus stacking, since we have no prior on the measured objects. This issue could lead to low measurement efficiency when the depth range of the measured objects does not cover the whole enlarged DOF. To improve the performance of the system under such situations, we developed a method that introduces another computational imaging technique: the focal sweep technique, to help determine the optimal focus settings adapting to different measured objects.</h4><h4>In summary, this dissertation contributed to high-speed, large depth-of-field, and automated 3D imaging, which can be used in micro-scale applications from the following aspects: (1) enlarging the DOF of the microscopic 3D imaging using the focus stacking technique; (2) developing methods to improve the speed of large DOF microscopic 3D imaging; and (3) developing a method to improve the efficiency of the focus stacking under certain circumstances. These contributions can potentially enable the structured-light 3D imaging technique to be an alternative 3D microscopy approach for many academic studies and industry applications.</h4><p></p>

The introduction of input devices with natural user interfaces in gaming hardware has changed the way we interact with games. Hardware with motion-sensing and gesture recognizing capabilities remove the constraint of interacting with games through typical traditional devices like mouse-keyboard and gamepads. This changes the way we approach games and how the game communicates back to us as the player opening new levels of interactivity. This thesis covers how eye tracker technology can be used to affect rendering effects in games.

The ongoing merger of the digital and optical components of the modern microscope is creating opportunities for new measurement techniques, along with new challenges for optical modelling. This thesis investigates several such opportunities and challenges which are particularly relevant to biomedical imaging. Fourier optics is used throughout the thesis as the underlying conceptual model, with a particular emphasis on three--dimensional Fourier optics. A new challenge for optical modelling provided by digital microscopy is the relaxation of traditional symmetry constraints on optical design. An extension of optical transfer function theory to deal with arbitrary lens pupil functions is presented in this thesis. This is used to chart the 3D vectorial structure of the spatial frequency spectrum of the intensity in the focal region of a high aperture lens when illuminated by linearly polarised beam. Wavefront coding has been used successfully in paraxial imaging systems to extend the depth of field. This is achieved by controlling the pupil phase with a cubic phase mask, and thereby balancing optical behaviour with digital processing. In this thesis I present a high aperture vectorial model for focusing with a cubic phase mask, and compare it with results calculated using the paraxial approximation. The effect of a refractive index change is also explored. High aperture measurements of the point spread function are reported, along with experimental confirmation of high aperture extended depth of field imaging of a biological specimen. Differential interference contrast is a popular method for imaging phase changes in otherwise transparent biological specimens. In this thesis I report on a new isotropic algorithm for retrieving the phase from differential interference contrast images of the phase gradient, using phase shifting, two directions of shear, and non--iterative Fourier phase integration incorporating a modified spiral phase transform. This method does not assume that the specimen has a constant amplitude. A simulation is presented which demonstrates good agreement between the retrieved phase and the phase of the simulated object, with excellent immunity to imaging noise.

People have complex thoughts, and they often express their thoughts with complex sentences using natural languages. This complexity may facilitate efficient communications among the audience with the same knowledge base. But on the other hand, for a different or new audience this composition becomes cumbersome to understand and analyze. Analysis of such compositions using syntactic or semantic measures is a challenging job and defines the base step for natural language processing. In this dissertation I explore and propose a number of new techniques to analyze and visualize the syntactic and semantic patterns of unstructured English texts. The syntactic analysis is done through a proposed visualization technique which categorizes and compares different English compositions based on their different reading complexity metrics. For the semantic analysis I use Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) to analyze the hidden patterns in complex compositions. I have used this technique to analyze comments from a social visualization web site for detecting the irrelevant ones (e.g., spam). The patterns of collaborations are also studied through statistical analysis. Word sense disambiguation is used to figure out the correct sense of a word in a sentence or composition. Using textual similarity measure, based on the different word similarity measures and word sense disambiguation on collaborative text snippets from social collaborative environment, reveals a direction to untie the knots of complex hidden patterns of collaboration.