Light field imaging based on microlens arrays – also known as plenoptic, holoscopic and integral imaging – has recently
risen up as feasible and prospective technology due to its ability to support functionalities not straightforwardly available
in conventional imaging systems, such as: post-production refocusing and depth of field changing. However, to
gradually reach the consumer market and to provide interoperability with current 2D and 3D representations, a display
scalable coding solution is essential.
In this context, this paper proposes an improved display scalable light field codec comprising a three-layer hierarchical
coding architecture (previously proposed by the authors) that provides interoperability with 2D (Base Layer) and 3D
stereo and multiview (First Layer) representations, while the Second Layer supports the complete light field content. For
further improving the compression performance, novel exemplar-based inter-layer coding tools are proposed here for the
Second Layer, namely: (i) an inter-layer reference picture construction relying on an exemplar-based optimization
algorithm for texture synthesis, and (ii) a direct prediction mode based on exemplar texture samples from lower layers.
Experimental results show that the proposed solution performs better than the tested benchmark solutions, including the
authors’ previous scalable codec.
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