Fully electrically controlled light-field camera via electrowetting liquid lens and liquid-crystal microlens array

Light-field imaging is an effective and straightforward way to image with three-dimensional information. In this paper, a new type of the fully electrically controlled light-field camera based on electrowetting liquid lens and liquid crystal microlens array (EW-LCMLA) is proposed. In the proposed camera, a liquid-crystal microlens array (LCMLA) is placed on the CMOS sensor to get the raw light-field images. Unlike conventional light-field camera using LCMLA, the proposed camera can rapidly adjust the compound-eye degree of light-field image by inserting a liquid lens between main lens and LCMLA, and by switching the external voltage on the liquid lens, the camera can work on multiple imaging modes, such as light-field imaging, conventional two-dimensional imaging and focal-stack imaging. For further improve the . In this study, an algorithm based on focal stack theory is also proposed to extract the depth information from the raw light-field image and merge the image focus on different distances to get all-in-focus image. We test the different imaging mode of the camera in indoor environments, and the experiments demonstrate that the proposed camera can capture high quality image on different mode, and shows excellent focal length adjustment ability without complex mechanical structure.