Abstract: Computational imaging systems are based on the joint design of optics and associated image reconstruction algorithms. Of particular interest in recent years has been the development of end-to-end learned “Deep Optics” systems that use differentiable optical simulation in combination with backpropagation to simultaneously learn optical design and deep network post-processing for applications such as hyperspectral imaging, HDR, or extended depth of field. In this talk I will in particular focus on new developments that expand the design space of such systems from simple DOE optics to compound refractive optics and mixtures of different types of optical components.

Bio: Wolfgang Heidrich is a Professor of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering in the KAUST Visual Computing Center, for which he also served as director from 2014 to 2021. Prof. Heidrich joined King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in 2014, after 13 years as a faculty member at the University of British Columbia. He received his PhD in from the University of Erlangen in 1999, and then worked as a Research Associate in the Computer Graphics Group of the Max-Planck-Institute for Computer Science in Saarbrucken, Germany, before joining UBC in 2000. Prof. Heidrich’s research interests lie at the intersection of imaging, optics, computer vision, computer graphics, and inverse problems. His more recent interest is in computational imaging, focusing on hardware-software co-design of the next generation of imaging systems, with applications such as High-Dynamic Range imaging, compact computational cameras, hyperspectral cameras, to name just a few. Prof. Heidrich’s work on High Dynamic Range Displays served as the basis for the technology behind Brightside Technologies, which was acquired by Dolby in 2007. Prof. Heidrich is a Fellow of the IEEE, AAIA, and Eurographics, and the recipient of a Humboldt Research Award as well as the ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award.

Webpage:  Wolfgang Heidrich — Home Page (vccimaging.org)