Trilobite-inspired neural nanophotonic light-field camera with extreme depth-of-field

Published

April 19, 2022

Author(s)

Wenqi Zhu, Lu Chen, Henri Lezec, Amit Agrawal

Abstract

A unique bifocal compound eye visual system is found in the extinct trilobites Dalmanitina socilis which enabled them to be sensitive to the light-field information and simultaneously perceive both close and distant objects in the environment. Here, inspired by the optical structure of their bifocal compound eye, we demonstrate a novel light-field imaging camera incorporating a photonic spin-multiplexed bifocal metalens array able to achieve both high- throughput and high-resolution light-field imaging with extreme depth-of-field. Furthermore, by leveraging a multi-scale convolutional neural network based aberration correction algorithm, we capture full-color images over a continuous depth-of-field ranging from 0.3 m to 300 m. Our results demonstrate elegant integration of nanophotonic technology with computational photography, and is expected to enable development of novel light-field imaging systems for microscopy, imaging and virtual reality applications.

Citation

Nature Communications

Volume

13

Issue

1

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-29568-y

Local Download

Citation

Zhu, W. , Chen, L. , Lezec, H. and Agrawal, A. (2022), Trilobite-inspired neural nanophotonic light-field camera with extreme depth-of-field, Nature Communications, [online], https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-29568-y, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=931903 (Accessed October 17, 2025)