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A comprehensive review on light field occlusion removal: Trends, challenges, and future directions

Research Abstract

Overcoming occlusions in light field (LF) imaging is a challenging yet complex task crucial for scene understanding, image quality enhancement, and restoring visual details in obstructed scenes. This review examines contemporary occlusion removal methods, spanning from classical techniques to advanced deep learning approaches that leverage LF data’s spatial and angular dimensions. We categorize these methods into two domains: (1) single-view inpainting methods often adapted for LF contexts, and (2) specialized LF occlusion removal techniques that exploit multi-view data. The review explores how these methods mitigate occlusion artifacts and also investigates LF acquisition technologies, representations, and the role of loss functions in optimizing model performance. A discussion of publicly available datasets and performance evaluation metrics addresses the challenges of handling large occlusions. The review concludes with future research directions, emphasizing hybrid approaches, refined loss functions, and scalable solutions for LF occlusion removal.

Research Authors
Mostafa Farouk Senussi, Mahmoud Abdalla, Mahmoud Salaheldin Kasem, Mohamed Mahmoud, Bilel Yagoub, Hyun-Soo Kang
Research Date
Research Department
Research Image
The Basic Paradigms for Occlusion Removal in Light-Field Imaging. To overcome occlusion challenges in LF imaging, advanced methods exploit 4D LF data, combining spatial and angular information. We conduct a comprehensive survey of LF occlusion removal technology and focus on the current significant research progress in fusing multi-view data for accurate reconstruction of hidden regions, enhancing image quality and scene understanding, far beyond single-view inpainting techniques.
Research Journal
IEEE Access
Research Pages
42472-42493
Research Publisher
IEEE
Research Vol
13
Research Website
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2025.3548133
Research Year
2025