Patent ID: 8493432

Claim:
A method for obtaining a refocused wide-angle image of a scene, comprising: acquiring, by a single stationary camera, an input image of a scene as observed in an array of spheres, wherein pixels in the input image corresponding to each sphere comprise a sphere image; defining, for each sphere, a set of virtual cameras on a line joining a center of the sphere and a center of projection of the camera, wherein each virtual camera has a virtual image plane; projecting, for each virtual camera of each sphere, the sphere image to the virtual image plane; selecting, for each virtual camera of each sphere, a set of pixels corresponding to a cone of rays associated with the virtual camera to produce a virtual camera image, wherein the set of pixels forms a circle in the virtual image plane; projecting, for each sphere, all of the virtual camera images to a refocusing geometry assuming a refocus viewpoint to produce a view, wherein the view represents a wide-angle lightfield view and wherein the views are generated for the refocusing geometry placed at multiple depths to estimate a wide field-of-view (FOV) depth map by evaluating a variance across the wide-angle views at each pixel; averaging the views for all the spheres to produce the refocused wide-angle image; and displaying the refocused wide-angle image on an output device.