Computational Imaging
Computational imaging is a technology to indirectly reconstruct images from observations using some algorithms relying on computation. In contract to traditional imaging, computational imaging is based on a dense integration of a sensing hardware system with the computation. Computational imaging broadly includes tomographic imaging, ultrasound imaging, magnetic resonance imaging, and computational photography.
Computational Photography
Computational photography is a part of computational imaging towards reconstruction of photographs. In traditional cameras, light rays from a point in a scene are imaged at a pixel on an imager through optical elements. On the other hand, computational photography technologies have renovated the imaging process by integrating computation in that. For example, a coded aperture encodes richer information of the light rays. Although the observation looks blurry and unfocused, it is possible to finally achieve better qualities of a photograph, such as higher spatial resolution and variable focus, via decoding on a computer.
Computer Graphics
Computer graphics is a technology to visualize graphics using computers. There are various sub-topics, such as fluid dynamics, geometric model, reflectance model, and so on. At CIGL, we focus on physically based rendering to visualize photorealistic graphics based on measurements. Especially, our targets are translucent objects and participating media, such as human skin, smoke, and fog.
Computational Fabrication
Computational fabrication is a new stream in digital fabrication. Digital fabrication tools have already become commonplace but data are manually designed or directly observed by a scanner. Computational fabrication is a challenge to integrate computation into digital fabrication in order to fabricate novel shapes, appearance, and functions. For example, it is possible to fabricate a specific translucency property by printing layers of computed patterns on a translucent material using a UV printer. We re-define the computer graphics as rendered graphics not only virtually but also physically.