Development of High Speed High Dynamic Range Videography

High speed video has been a significant tool for unraveling the quantitative and qualitative assessment of phenomena that is too fast to readily observe. It was first used in 1852 by William Henry Fox Talbot to settle a dispute with reference to the synchronous position of a horse's hooves while galloping. Since that time private industry, government, and enthusiasts have been measuring dynamic scenarios with high speed video. One challenge that faces the high speed video community is the dynamic range of the sensors. The dynamic range of the sensor is constrained to the bit depth of the analog to digital converter, the deep well capacity of the sensor site, and baseline noise. A typical high speed camera can span a 60 dB dynamic range, 1000:1, natively. More recently the dynamic range has been extended to about 80 dB utilizing different pixel acquisition methods.

In this dissertation a method to extend the dynamic range will be presented and demonstrated to extend the dynamic range of a high speed camera system to over 170 dB, about 31,000,000:1. The proposed formation methodology is adaptable to any camera combination, and almost any needed dynamic range. The dramatic increase in the dynamic range is made possible through an adaptation of the current high dynamic range image formation methodologies. Due to the high cost of a high speed camera, a minimum number of cameras are desired to form a high dynamic range high speed video system. With a reduced number of cameras spanning a significant range, the errors on the formation process compound significantly relative to a normal high dynamic range image. The increase in uncertainty is created from the lack of relevant correlated information for final image formation, necessitating the development of a new formation methodology.

In the proceeding text the problem statement and background information will be reviewed in depth. The development of a new weighting function, stochastic image formation process, tone map methodology, and optimized multi camera design will be presented. The proposed methodologies' effectiveness will be compared to current methods throughout the text and a final demonstration will be presented.