Three-dimensional single-pixel compressive reflectivity imaging based on complementary modulation

A three-dimensional (3D) imager with a single-pixel detector and complementary intensity modulation of a digital micromirror device (DMD) array, which does not rely on scene raster scanning as in light detection and ranging (LIDAR) or on a two-dimensional array of sensors as used in time-of-flight (TOF) cameras, can not only capture full-color, high-quality images of real-life objects, but also recover the depth information and 3D reflectivity of the scene, reducing the required measurement dimension as well as the complexity, and cutting the cost of the detector array down to a single unit. The imager achieves spatial resolution using compressed sensing to exploit the sparsity of the signal. The disparity maps of the scene are reconstructed using sum of absolute or squared differences to reveal the depth information. This nonscanning, low-complexity 3D reflectivity imaging prototype may be of considerable value to various computer vision applications.