The cover of the 3rd June issue of Physical Review Letters is dedicated to the article "Correlation Plenoptic Imaging", a the research conducted by the QUANTUM group of INFN Bari.
The research concerns an innovative procedure to retrieve and elaborate images in the context of plenoptic photography. Beside reproducing the digital image of a scene, a plenoptic camera retrieves, in a single shot, images from different perspectives; this enables both the reconstruction of the scene in 3D and the refocusing of the overall picture.
However, present plenoptic imaging techniques are affected by low resolution, due to the intrinsic inverse relationship between resolution and maximum achievable depth of focus. In their Physical Review Letters article, the QUANTUM research team demonstrates that, by integrating plenoptic imaging with quantum correlation phenomena between photon pairs, it is possible to overcome this limitation, thus obtaining high-resolution and high-depth-of-focus images. Such a substantial improvement is able to generate a revolutionary change in microscopy, stereoscopy, and 3D imaging.
The research has also led to an Italian patent request.
