Image Formation

Abstract

Image formation includes three major aspects. One is geometric in nature. The question is where we find an object in the image. Essentially, all imaging techniques project a three-dimensional space in one way or the other onto a two-dimensional image plane. Thus, basically, imaging can be regarded as a projection from 3-D into 2-D space. The loss of one coordinate constitutes a severe loss of information about the geometry of the observed scene. However, we unconsciously and constantly experience that our visual system perceives a three-dimensional impression sufficiently well that we can grasp the three-dimensional world around us and interact with it. The ease with which this reconstruction task is performed by biological visual systems might tempt us to think that this is a simple task. But — as we will see in Chapters 8 and 17 — it is not that simple.