Abstract: A method compresses a set of correlated signals by first converting each signal to a sequence of integers, which are further organized as a set of bit-planes. An inverse accumulator is applied to each bit-plane to produce a bit-plane of shifted bits, which are permuted according to a predetermined permutation to produce bit-planes of permuted bits. Each bit-plane of permuted bits is partitioned into a set of blocks of bits. Syndrome bits are generated for each block of bits according to a rate-adaptive base code. Subsequently, the syndrome bits are decompressed in a decoder to recover the original correlated signals.

Abstract: A method extracts an alpha matte from a video acquired of a scene. A set of pinhole or narrow aperture images IP is acquired of the scene with a camera aperture set to a relatively large depth-of-field. The scene includes a background B and a foreground F. A corresponding set of wide aperture images IF is acquired of the scene with the camera aperture set to a relatively small depth-of-field. The respective pinhole and wide aperture images are combined to extract an alpha matte according to ?=1+(IF?IP)/(B?BF).

Abstract: A method extracts an alpha matte from a video acquired of a scene. A set of pinhole or narrow aperture images IP is acquired of the scene with a camera aperture set to a relatively large depth-of-field. The scene includes a background B and a foreground F. A corresponding set of wide aperture images IF is acquired of the scene with the camera aperture set to a relatively small depth-of-field. The respective pinhole and wide aperture images are combined to extract an alpha matte according to ?=1+(IF?IP)/(B?BF).

Abstract: A camera system acquires multiple optical characteristics at multiple resolutions of a scene. The camera system includes multiple optical elements arranged as a tree having a multiple of nodes connected by edges. the nodes represent optical elements sharing a single optical center, and the edges representing light paths between the nodes. The tree has the following structure: a single root node acquiring a plenoptic field originating from a scene; nodes with a single child node represent filters, lenses, apertures, and shutters; nodes with multiple child nodes represent beam splitters and leaf nodes represent imaging sensors. Furthermore, a length of the light paths from the roof node to each leaf nodes can be equal.

Abstract: A method and system extracts a matte from images acquired of a scene. A foreground image focused at a foreground in a scene, a background image focused at a background in the scene, and a pinhole image focused on the entire scene are acquired. These three images can be acquired sequentially by a single camera, or simultaneous by three cameras. In the later case, foreground, background and pinhole sequences of images can be acquired. The pinhole image is compared to the foreground image and the background image to extract a matte representing the scene. The comparison classifies pixels in the images as foreground, background, or unknown pixels. An optimizer minimizes an error function in the form of Fourier image equations using a gradient descent method. The error function expresses pixel intensity differences.