Patent ID: 8315476

Claim:
A camera, comprising: a photosensor configured to capture light projected onto the photosensor, wherein the photosensor comprises a plurality of pixels; an objective lens, wherein the objective lens is configured to refract light from a scene located in front of the camera to form an image of the scene at an image plane of the objective lens; and a microlens array positioned between the objective lens and the photosensor, wherein the microlens array comprises a plurality of microlenses, wherein the plurality of microlenses are focused on the image plane and not on the objective lens, and wherein each microlens samples a respective region of the image of the scene formed at the image plane by the objective lens, and wherein each region of the image of the scene sampled by the microlenses partially overlaps at least one other region of the image of the scene sampled by the microlenses; wherein each microlens of the microlens array is configured to project a respective region of the image of the scene sampled by the microlens onto a separate location on the photosensor, wherein each pixel of each said location on the photosensor samples radiance from a particular area of the image of the scene, and wherein the areas of the image of the scene sampled by the pixels of each said location on the photosensor partially overlap the areas of the image of the scene sampled by the pixels of at least one other location on the photosensor onto which an overlapping region of the image of the scene is projected; wherein the photosensor is configured to capture a flat that includes each of the regions of the image of the scene projected onto the photosensor by the microlenses in a separate microimage in the flat; and wherein the flat is configured to be processed by a super-resolution technique that interleaves pixels in neighboring microimages according to a subpixel shift that indicates the amount of overlap of the pixels to render a high-resolution image of the scene.