TIK: A time domain continuous imaging testbed using conventional still images and video

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.