Harnessing nature’s limits: computational 3D imaging from fast industrial inspection to “seeing the unseen” (Keynote Presentation)

Computational imaging and display principles are key enabling technologies with the potential to transform a wide range of future applications. New types of cameras could see through deep tissue, fog, or smoke. Fast and precise 3D scanners could improve medical diagnosis and therapy, and become essential for measuring dynamic scenes in robotic surgery, autonomous navigation, or additive manufacturing. Advances in 3D display and eye-tracking technologies could spark the next wave in AR/VR. Amidst these possibilities, understanding the fundamental physical and information-theoretical limits in computational imaging proves to be a powerful tool: Limits often appear as uncertainty relations, guiding us to optimize critical system parameters (e.g., speed or accuracy) by trading off less essential information for a given task. This talk will highlight the virtue of limits in computational imaging by discussing our recent research activities in industrial inspection, medical imaging, and AR/VR. Topics include new methods for high-accuracy eye tracking as well as high-speed, single-shot 3D metrology on challenging shiny surfaces for the inspection of metallic objects and surgical robot navigation. Moreover, I will introduce a set of techniques that use so-called “synthetic waves” for computational holographic imaging through scattering media -such as biological tissue- which also allow the capture of “light-in-flight” information without the need for pulsed lasers or fast detectors.