Scalable Light Field Coding Using Weighted Binary Images

We propose an efficient coding scheme for a dense light field, i.e., a set of multi-viewpoint images taken with very small viewpoint intervals. The key idea behind our proposal is that a light field is represented only using weighted binary images, where several binary images and corresponding weight values are to be chosen to optimally approximate the light field. The coding scheme derived from this idea is completely different from those of modern image/video coding standards. However, we found that our scheme can achieve comparable coding efficiency (rate-distortion performance) to that of modern highly-sophisticated video codecs. Moreover, the decoding process of our scheme is extremely simple, which will lead to a faster and less power-hungry decoder than those of the modern codecs. Furthermore, our scheme can be made scalable, where the accuracy of the decoded light field is improved in a progressive manner as we use more encoded information. Thanks to the divide-and-conquer strategy adopted for the scalable coding, we can also drastically reduce the computational complexity of the encoding process.