Engineers Discover How To Turn An Ordinary Digital Camera Into A 3D Camera

Engineers from Duke University have figured out how to manipulate components in a digital camera to transform it into a camera capable of 3D imaging.

Digital cameras come with a variety of components that allow it to perform functions like auto-focus, high-definition recording, and panoramic shots. By re-purposing those functions, the engineers were able to create 3D imagery.

They demonstrated this in a proof-of-concept laboratory experiment using a small deformable mirror that can direct and focus light in order to show how the technology in modern digital cameras like the image stabilization and focus modules, could be harnessed to achieve the same results without additional hardware, according to an Optical Society news release.

3D imaging usually requires the photographer to take multiple shots from different angles and perspective, but the team, led by Professor David Brady, revealed that the same depth-of-field qualities could be captured from just a single shot and even maintain image quality.

“When integrated into commercial cameras and other optical technologies, this visualization technique could improve core functions, like image stabilization, and increase the speed of auto-focus, which would enhance the quality of photographs,” according to the news release.

“A variety of single-shot approaches to improve the speed and quality of 3D image capture has been proposed over the past decades. Each approach, however, suffers from permanent degradations in 2D image quality and/or hardware complexity,” said Patrick Llull from the Duke Imaging and Spectroscopy Program.

Today’s digital cameras typically come with modules that help eliminate shakiness by measuring the inertia or motion of the camera and compensating with rapid lens movements— creating multiple adjustments per second within the module. The team discovered that the same hardware responsible for that task can actually be used to change the image capture process, recording additional information about the scene. So with the proper software and processing this additional information can unlock a hidden third dimension, giving an ordinary camera 3D imaging capabilities.

Their findings have been published in the Optical Society Journal.

For more details on the research see full news release.