Super-resolution (SR) image processing describes any technique by which the resolution of an imaging system is enhanced. Normally, the resolution being enhanced is spatial; images are processed to provide noise reduction, sub-pixel image localization, etc. Less often, it is used to enhance temporal properties – for example, to derive a higher framerate sequence from one or more lower framerate sequences. Time domain continuous imaging (TDCI) representations are inherently frameless, representing a time-varying scene as a compressed continuous waveform per pixel, but they still imply finite temporal resolution and accuracy. This paper explores computational methods by which the temporal resolution can be enhanced and temporal noise reduced using a TDCI representation.
Time domain continuous imaging (TDCI) centers on the capture and representation of time-varying image data not as a series of frames, but as a compressed continuous waveform per pixel. A high-dynamic-range (HDR) image can be computationally synthesized from TDCI data to represent any virtual exposure interval covered by the waveforms, thus allowing both exposure start time and shutter speed to be selected arbitrarily after capture. This also enables extraction of video with arbitrary framerate and shutter angle. This paper presents the design, and discusses performance, of the first complete, fully open source, infrastructure supporting experimental use of TDCI: TIK (Temporal Imaging from Kentucky or Temporal Image Kontainer). The system not only provides for processing TDCI .tik files, but also allows conventional video files and still image sequences to be converted into TDCI .tik files.