SIGGRAPH: HDRchitecture Real-Time Stereoscopic HDR Imaging System

  • Current digital cameras have limited dynamic ranges. Users typically expose for the highlights or the shadows or a compromise between them, and rarely get everything exposed properly.
  • To address this, University of Toronto researchers showed their HDRchitecture in the Emerging Technology section of SIGGRAPH last week. HDRchitecture is a real-time visualization system that can handle scenes with dynamic ranges in excess of a million to one.
  • The demonstration featured a welding scene in which attendees were able to clearly see the object being welded as well as nearby objects without the usual visual distortion. (Take a look at the video demo.)
  • The real-time HDRchitecture video system processes up to 120 frames per second in groups of three or four frames. Each frame has a different exposure setting. And together in a group, it captures both the highlights and shadows.
  • The system them composites the images together for viewing at 30fps on a lower dynamic range display. The system can render images at a high image quality up to 1920×1080 resolution and can accommodate stereoscopic vision.
  • HDRchitecture uses GPUs and multicore CPUs for real-time HDR processing. The system is compact enough that it might eventually be incorporated into eyeglasses.
  • Finally, the HDRchitecture system may be adapted to current digital cameras. One of the rigs shown consisted of a Canon DSLR with customized firmware. One limitation of that system, however, was a reduced frame rate of only 20fps.

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