An analysis of HEVC compression for light field image refocusing applications

A light field image describes a sampling of the intensity and direction of the light rays in space. The recent technological advances in light field camera devices are fostering the development of novel imaging application. Some of the main applications are post-processing for interactive image perspective change, image refocusing, point cloud reconstruction, and image segmentation. The problem of light field data compression is a current research topic for international standardization bodies, industries, and research institutes. This paper explores the problem of compression with respect to light field image refocusing application. The main contribution of this paper is an analysis of the performance of high-efficiency video coding in terms of peak signal to noise ratio and structural-similarity index metric versus compression ratio. The experimental analysis has been performed on a reference dataset currently used for the standardization activities of ISO/IEC JPEG Pleno and shows the tradeoff between compression and objective quality at different quantization parameters.