High Dynamic Range Imaging Using A 2x2 Camera Array with Polarizing Filters

Stepping into the 4.0 industry, digital cameras play an important role in most activities of our daily life. They are considered to be the eyes of intelligent machines such as autonomous vehicles, industrial sorting machines, etc. In many situations with difficult lighting conditions, conventional cameras cannot capture objects and phenomena correctly due to lack of dynamic ranges. Many researchers have used multiple captures which involved taking many photos with different exposure levels to achieve high dynamic range (HDR) images [1-7]. Consequently, it is difficult to record HDR motion picture. To overcome this difficulty, we propose a technique of a single-shot recording of HDR image using a 2x2 polarization imaging camera. Each camera is an imaging device equipped with a polarizing filter having a different linear-polarized light from the object. The proposed technique synthesizes an HDR image from the multiple images acquired from the cameras. We compare our results with the traditional approach using multiple exposures for cases with different lighting conditions. The results are promising.