Science & Technology:

Image processing taken to the next level...

It may sound like utter hokem, but it is self-consistent and passes my scientific BS filter:

We present a novel photographic technique called dual photography, which exploits Helmholtz reciprocity to interchange the lights and cameras in a scene. With a video projector providing structured illumination, reciprocity permits us to generate pictures from the viewpoint of the projector, even though no camera was present at that location. The technique is completely image-based, requiring no knowledge of scene geometry or surface properties, and by its nature automatically includes all transport paths, including shadows, interreflections and caustics. In its simplest form, the technique can be used to take photographs without a camera; we demonstrate this by capturing a photograph using a projector and a photo-resistor. If the photo-resistor is replaced by a camera, we can produce a 4D dataset that allows for relighting with 2D incident illumination. Using an array of cameras we can produce a 6D slice of the 8D reflectance field that allows for relighting with arbitrary light fields. Since an array of cameras can operate in parallel without interference, whereas an array of light sources cannot, dual photography is fundamentally a more efficient way to capture such a 6D dataset than a system based on multiple projectors and one camera. As an example, we show how dual photography can be used to capture and relight scenes.

What exactly have they done?

They have verified that using a reasonably well understood principle, they have been able to reconstruct a real image from point of view that they do not have any direct information from.

This sounds like nothing, but it is more important than it seems on the face of it.

We can relatively easily reconstruct an artificial scene from any angle, as was well proven by the Star Wars movie The Phantom Menace (not discounting the numerous movies preceding or following it that used digital imaging), but to reconstruct a real image/scene from a different viewpoint using data only from that original image has not been done before.

Trivial? Not really.

Broader implications?

Difficult to list at the moment without sounding as if there were an indulgence in hyperbole, which is the risk for any advance in science or technology.

Often, however, the hyperbole is proved to be an underestimation of the actual potential and true consequences.

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