Kevin Köser

Underwater imaging has emerged as a valuable tool in biological oceanography, allowing for non-invasive in situ quantification and classification of organisms and particles at high spatial and temporal resolution. Qualitative and quantitative information encompassing multiple trophic levels is crucial to improve our mechanistic understanding of food-web dynamics and the vertical flux of organic matter to the deep ocean. However, despite significant progress over the last decades, no instrument exists that can obtain high-resolution images of marine organisms over a wide size spectrum (few μm to several cm). We will solve this interdisciplinary problem by constructing the All-In-Focus imaging system (AIF), a single unconventional and novel imaging system that will unify a lightfield camera system and a shadowgraph approach in one single system. The lightfield camera system allows the retrieval of three-dimensional information and greatly enhances the depth of field in comparison to standard cameras whereas the shadowgraph imaging approach allows to image a wide size spectrum of objects in a large image volume. This project is attended with high risk, since lightfield technology is still a novel area subject to research and has never been used before in underwater settings and is therefore unlikely to be funded by 3rd party organization. As a result of our institutional partnership, we will combine our domain specific knowledge, computational camera systems and lightfield imaging at the CAU and the experience in underwater imaging at the GEOMAR, in this solution-oriented project to significantly improve our abilities to image the ocean.