Acquiring and rendering high-resolution spherical mosaics

We describe an acquisition and viewing method for high-resolution, high-dynamic range spherical image mosaics. These mosaics consist of hundreds of high-resolution, high-dynamic-range color images, each annotated with 3-DOF orientation about a common optical center. An automated acquisition platform captures a pre-specified hemispherical tiling of images. Each image is acquired with specified approximate camera rotation and bracketed exposures for high-dynamic range. Relative rotations among images, as well as internal camera parameters, are automatically refined using a correlation-based global optimization. The improved rotation and internal parameter estimates are used in an interactive viewer for smooth inspection of the resulting large spherical mosaic. The renderer uses a modified form of adaptive, incremental, parallel raycasting to sample the original images at pixel centers, preserving detail from the raw images while maintaining interactive display rates. We show an example dataset that resolves millimeter-scale detail at a viewing distance of ten meters.