Data compression for light-field rendering

Abstract

Two light-field compression schemes are presented. The codecs are compared with regard to compression efficiency and rendering performance. The first proposed coder is based on video-compression techniques that have been modified to code the four-dimensional light-field data structure efficiently. The second coder relies entirely on disparity-compensated image prediction, establishing a hierarchical structure among the light-field images. The coding performance of both schemes is evaluated using publicly available light fields of synthetic, as well as real-world, scenes. Compression ratios vary between 100:1 and 2000:1, depending on the reconstruction quality and light-field scene characteristics.