Researchers Win Best Paper at ICCP 2022

Sankaranarayanan and researchers won Best Paper at the 2022 IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography. Their paper, “Polarized Spiral Point Spread Function for Single-Shot 3D,” outlines a new depth estimation technique using a specialized point spread function (PSF) to determine depth from a single-lense image. A point spread function describes the bloom in a photograph from a single point of light, this bloom changes depending on where the point of focus is in the image and can be used to determine depth. This is generally used in applications where there are single points of light to measure. The polaraized spiral point spread function (PS²F) takes this concept further. Using many techniques including polarization and Double Helix PSF the team was able to outperform other state-of-the-art phase masks by 2x or more.

The team consisting of Bhargav Ghanekar, Vishwanath Saragadam, Dushyant Mehra, Anna-Karin Gustavsson, Aswin C. Sankaranarayanan, and Ashok Veeraraghavan, presented alongside 84 other teams from all over the world over two days.

The field of Computational Photography seeks to create new photographic functionalities and experiences that go beyond what is possible with traditional cameras and image processing tools. The IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography is organized with the vision of fostering the community of researchers, from many different disciplines, working on computational photography.