JPEG Pleno light field: current standard and future directions

Abstract

This paper reports the status of the JPEG Pleno standard for the light field imaging modality and discusses current activities towards future developments of the standard. Currently, three parts (Part 1: Framework, Part 2: Light field coding with Amendment 1: Profiles and levels for JPEG Pleno light field coding system and Part 3: Conformance testing) have been standardized. Part 4: Reference software is in the final approval stage before standardization. The four-dimensional nature of plenoptic data poses many challenges. The literature presents several subjective and objective assessment models for the evaluation of two-dimensional (image/video) data. As for plenoptic data this topic is still under investigation, one of the JPEG Pleno standardization activities targets the development of plenoptic image quality assessment standard. Finally, as one of the possible directions within future JPEG Pleno standardization activities, JPEG Pleno is currently exploring state-of-the-art light field coding architectures exploiting learning-based approaches to assess the potential of these coding methods in terms of compression efficiency.