Prof. Wolfgang Heidrich is the director of the Visual Computing
Center at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).
He is also affiliated with the University of British Columbia, where
he held the Dolby Research Chair until 2013. Dr. Heidrich received
his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Erlangen in 1999,
and then worked as a Research Associate in the Computer Graphics
Group of the Max-Planck-Institute for Computer Science in
Saarbrucken, Germany, before joining UBC in 2000. Dr. Heidrich's
research interests lie at the intersection of computer graphics,
computer vision, imaging, and optics. In particular, he has worked on
computational photography and displays, High Dynamic Range imaging
and display, image-based modeling, measuring, and rendering, geometry
acquisition, GPU-based rendering, and global illumination. Dr.
Heidrich has written well over 150 refereed publications on these
subjects and has served on numerous program committees. His work on
High Dynamic Range Displays served as the basis for the technology
behind Brightside Technologies, which was acquired by Dolby in 2007
Dr. Heidrich has served as the program co-chair for Graphics Hardware
2002, Graphics Interface 2004, the Eurographics Symposium on
Rendering, 2006, and PROCAMS 2011. Dr. Heidrich is the recipient of a
2014 Humboldt Research Award.

AG 1, AG 2, AG 3, AG 4, AG 5, RG1, SWS, MMCI   Info

MPI Audience

English

60 Minutes

Saarbrücken

Transient imaging is a recent imaging modality in which short pulses of light are observed "in flight" as they propagate through a scene. Transient images are useful to help understand light propagation in complex environments and to analyze light transport for research and many practical applications. Two such examples are the reconstruction of occluded geometry, i.e. "looking around a corner", or measuring surface reflectance. Unfortunately, advances in research and practical applications have so far been hindered by the high cost of the required instrumentation, as well as the fragility and difficulty to operate and calibrate devices such as femtosecond lasers and streak cameras. To address this, we present a device that allows inexpensive and fast transient imaging using photonic mixer devices (PMDs). Our portable device achieves this by capturing a sequence of modulated images with a PMD sensor and inferring a transient image using numerical optimization and a mathematical model for local light interactions. By doing so, the cost of transient imaging is reduced by several orders of magnitude and the capture process is dramatically sped up and simplified. We envision that in the future not only research but virtually everybody has access to inexpensive, fast and portable transient-image cameras with its many emerging applications.

Christian Theobalt

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