Bio


Levoy's current interests include the science and art of photography, computational photography, light field sensing and display, and applications of computer graphics in microscopy and biology.

Academic Appointments


  • Emeritus Faculty, Acad Council, Computer Science

Honors & Awards


  • Member, National Academy of Engineering (2022)
  • Fellow, Association for Computing Machinery (2007)

Program Affiliations


  • Symbolic Systems Program

Professional Education


  • PhD, University of North Carolina, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering (1989)

2023-24 Courses


All Publications


  • Wave optics theory and 3-D deconvolution for the light field microscope OPTICS EXPRESS Broxton, M., Grosenick, L., Yang, S., Cohen, N., Andalman, A., Deisseroth, K., Levoy, M. 2013; 21 (21): 25418-25439

    Abstract

    Light field microscopy is a new technique for high-speed volumetric imaging of weakly scattering or fluorescent specimens. It employs an array of microlenses to trade off spatial resolution against angular resolution, thereby allowing a 4-D light field to be captured using a single photographic exposure without the need for scanning. The recorded light field can then be used to computationally reconstruct a full volume. In this paper, we present an optical model for light field microscopy based on wave optics, instead of previously reported ray optics models. We also present a 3-D deconvolution method for light field microscopy that is able to reconstruct volumes at higher spatial resolution, and with better optical sectioning, than previously reported. To accomplish this, we take advantage of the dense spatio-angular sampling provided by a microlens array at axial positions away from the native object plane. This dense sampling permits us to decode aliasing present in the light field to reconstruct high-frequency information. We formulate our method as an inverse problem for reconstructing the 3-D volume, which we solve using a GPU-accelerated iterative algorithm. Theoretical limits on the depth-dependent lateral resolution of the reconstructed volumes are derived. We show that these limits are in good agreement with experimental results on a standard USAF 1951 resolution target. Finally, we present 3-D reconstructions of pollen grains that demonstrate the improvements in fidelity made possible by our method.

    View details for DOI 10.1364/OE.21.025418

    View details for Web of Science ID 000326085600097

    View details for PubMedID 24150383

    View details for PubMedCentralID PMC3867103

  • The Frankencamera: An Experimental Platform for Computational Photography COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM Adams, A., Jacobs, D. E., Dolson, J., Tico, M., Pulli, K., Talvala, E., Ajdin, B., Vaquero, D., Lensch, H. P., Horowitz, M., Park, S. H., Gelfand, N., Baek, J., Matusik, W., Levoy, M. 2012; 55 (11): 90-98
  • Application of Zernike polynomials towards accelerated adaptive focusing of transcranial high intensity focused ultrasound MEDICAL PHYSICS Kaye, E. A., Hertzberg, Y., Marx, M., Werner, B., Navon, G., Levoy, M., Pauly, K. B. 2012; 39 (10): 6254-6263

    Abstract

    To study the phase aberrations produced by human skulls during transcranial magnetic resonance imaging guided focused ultrasound surgery (MRgFUS), to demonstrate the potential of Zernike polynomials (ZPs) to accelerate the adaptive focusing process, and to investigate the benefits of using phase corrections obtained in previous studies to provide the initial guess for correction of a new data set.The five phase aberration data sets, analyzed here, were calculated based on preoperative computerized tomography (CT) images of the head obtained during previous transcranial MRgFUS treatments performed using a clinical prototype hemispherical transducer. The noniterative adaptive focusing algorithm [Larrat et al., "MR-guided adaptive focusing of ultrasound," IEEE Trans. Ultrason. Ferroelectr. Freq. Control 57(8), 1734-1747 (2010)] was modified by replacing Hadamard encoding with Zernike encoding. The algorithm was tested in simulations to correct the patients' phase aberrations. MR acoustic radiation force imaging (MR-ARFI) was used to visualize the effect of the phase aberration correction on the focusing of a hemispherical transducer. In addition, two methods for constructing initial phase correction estimate based on previous patient's data were investigated. The benefits of the initial estimates in the Zernike-based algorithm were analyzed by measuring their effect on the ultrasound intensity at the focus and on the number of ZP modes necessary to achieve 90% of the intensity of the nonaberrated case.Covariance of the pairs of the phase aberrations data sets showed high correlation between aberration data of several patients and suggested that subgroups can be based on level of correlation. Simulation of the Zernike-based algorithm demonstrated the overall greater correction effectiveness of the low modes of ZPs. The focal intensity achieves 90% of nonaberrated intensity using fewer than 170 modes of ZPs. The initial estimates based on using the average of the phase aberration data from the individual subgroups of subjects was shown to increase the intensity at the focal spot for the five subjects.The application of ZPs to phase aberration correction was shown to be beneficial for adaptive focusing of transcranial ultrasound. The skull-based phase aberrations were found to be well approximated by the number of ZP modes representing only a fraction of the number of elements in the hemispherical transducer. Implementing the initial phase aberration estimate together with Zernike-based algorithm can be used to improve the robustness and can potentially greatly increase the viability of MR-ARFI-based focusing for a clinical transcranial MRgFUS therapy.

    View details for DOI 10.1118/1.4752085

    View details for Web of Science ID 000310101900044

    View details for PubMedID 23039661

    View details for PubMedCentralID PMC3470612

  • Unstructured Light Fields COMPUTER GRAPHICS FORUM Davis, A., Levoy, M., Durand, F. 2012; 31 (2): 305-314
  • CMOS Image Sensors With Multi-Bucket Pixels for Computational Photography IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS Wan, G., Li, X., Agranov, G., Levoy, M., Horowitz, M. 2012; 47 (4): 1031-1042
  • Applications of Multi-Bucket Sensors to Computational Photography. Stanford Computer Graphics Laboratory Technical Report 2012-2 Wan, G., Horowitz, M., Levoy, M. 2012
  • Focal stack compositing for depth of field control Stanford Computer Graphics Laboratory Technical 2012-1 Jacobs, David, E., Baek, J., Levoy, M. 2012
  • Digital Video Stabilization and Rolling Shutter Correction using Gyroscopes Stanford Computer Science Tech Report CSTR 2011-03 Karpenko, A., Jacobs, David, E., Baek, J., Levoy, M. 2011
  • Experimental Platforms for Computational Photography IEEE COMPUTER GRAPHICS AND APPLICATIONS Levoy, M. 2010; 30 (5): 81-87
  • The Frankencamera: An Experimental Platform for Computational Photography ACM TRANSACTIONS ON GRAPHICS Adams, A., Jacobs, D. E., Dolson, J., Tico, M., Pulli, K., Talvala, E., Ajdin, B., Vaquero, D., Lensch, H. P., Horowitz, M., Park, S. H., Gelfand, N., Baek, J., Matusik, W., Levoy, M. 2010; 29 (4)
  • Recording and controlling the 4D light field in a microscope using microlens arrays JOURNAL OF MICROSCOPY Levoy, M., Zhang, Z., McDowall, I. 2009; 235 (2): 144-162

    Abstract

    By inserting a microlens array at the intermediate image plane of an optical microscope, one can record four-dimensional light fields of biological specimens in a single snapshot. Unlike a conventional photograph, light fields permit manipulation of viewpoint and focus after the snapshot has been taken, subject to the resolution of the camera and the diffraction limit of the optical system. By inserting a second microlens array and video projector into the microscope's illumination path, one can control the incident light field falling on the specimen in a similar way. In this paper, we describe a prototype system we have built that implements these ideas, and we demonstrate two applications for it: simulating exotic microscope illumination modalities and correcting for optical aberrations digitally.

    View details for Web of Science ID 000268300100005

    View details for PubMedID 19659909

  • Gaussian KD-Trees for Fast High-Dimensional Filtering ACM SIGGRAPH Conference 2009 Adams, A., Gelfand, N., Dolson, J., Levoy, M. ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY. 2009
  • Wigner Distributions and How They Relate to the Light Field IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography (ICCP) Zhang, Z., Levoy, M. 2009
  • Flexible Multimodal Camera Using a Light Field Architecture IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography (ICCP) Horstmeyer, R., Euliss, G., Athale, R., Levoy, M. 2009
  • Gaussian KD-Trees for Fast High-Dimensional Filtering Adams, A., Gelfand, N., Dolson, J., Levoy, M. 2009
  • Computational Photography on Large Collections of Images COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM Levoy, M. 2008; 51 (10): 86-86
  • Combining confocal imaging and descattering Eurographics Symposium on Rendering 2008 Fuchs, C., Heinz, M., Levoy, M., Scidel, H., Lensch, H. P. WILEY-BLACKWELL. 2008: 1245–53
  • Spatially Adaptive Photographic Flash Technical Report 612, ETH Zurich, Institute of Visual Computing Adelsberger, R., Ziegler, R., Levoy, M., Gross, M. 2008; 612
  • Veiling glare in high dynamic range imaging ACM SIGGRAPH 2007 Conference Talvala, E., Adams, A., Horowitz, M., Levoy, M. ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY. 2007
  • Synthetic aperture focusing using dense camera arrays Workshop on Advanced 3D Imaging for Safety and Security held in Conjunction with the International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Vaish, V., Garg, G., Talvala, E., Antunez, E., Wilburn, B., Horowitz, M., Levoy, M. SPRINGER. 2007: 159-?
  • General Linear Cameras with Finite Aperture Eurographics Symposium on Rendering (EGSR) Adams, A., Levoy, M. 2007
  • Veiling Glare in High Dynamic Range Imaging Talvala, E. (., Adams, A., Horowitz, M., Levoy, M. 2007
  • Light fields and computational imaging COMPUTER Levoy, M. 2006; 39 (8): 46-?
  • Light field microscopy ACM TRANSACTIONS ON GRAPHICS Levoy, M., Ng, R., Adams, A., Footer, M., Horowitz, M. 2006; 25 (3): 924-934
  • Light Field Microscopy Levoy, M., Ng, R., Adams, A., Footer, M., Horowitz, M. 2006
  • Symmetric Photography : Exploiting Data-sparseness in Reflectance Fields Garg, G., Talvala, E. (., Levoy, M., Lensch, Hendrik, P.A. 2006
  • Fragments of the City: Stanford's Digital Forma Urbis Romae Project Koller, D., Trimble, J., Najbjerg, T., Gelfand, N., Levoy, M. 2006
  • Computer-aided Reconstruction and New Matches in the Forma Urbis Romae Koller, D., Levoy, M. 2006
  • Reconstructing Occluded Surfaces using Synthetic Apertures: Stereo, Focus and Robust Measures Vaish, V., Szeliski, R., Zitnick, C., L., Kang, S. B., Levoy, M. 2006
  • High performance imaging using large camera arrays ACM SIGGRAPH 2005 Conference Wilburn, B., Joshi, N., Vaish, V., Talvala, E. V., Antunez, E., Barth, A., Adams, A., Horowitz, M., Levoy, M. ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY. 2005: 765–76
  • Dual photography ACM SIGGRAPH 2005 Conference Sen, P., Chen, B., Garg, G., Marschner, S. R., Horowitz, M., Levoy, M., Lensch, H. P. ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY. 2005: 745–55
  • Protecting 3D graphics content COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM Koller, D., Levoy, M. 2005; 48 (6): 74-80
  • High-speed videography using a dense camera array 26th International Congress on High-Speed Photography and Photonics Wilburn, B., Joshi, N., Vaish, V., Levoy, M., Horowitz, M. SPIE-INT SOC OPTICAL ENGINEERING. 2005: 913–920
  • High Performance Imaging Using Large Camera Arrays Wilburn, B., Joshi, N., Vaish, V., Talvala, E. (., Antunez, E., Barth, A., Levoy, M. 2005
  • Light Field Photography with a Hand-Held Plenoptic Camera Stanford University Computer Science Tech Report CSTR Ng, R., Levoy, M., Brédif, M., Duval, G., Horowitz, M., Hanrahan, P. 2005: 2005-02
  • Interactive Deformation of Light Fields Chen, B., Ofek, E., Shum, H., Levoy, M. 2005
  • Dual Photography Sen, P., Chen, B., Garg, G., Marschner, S., Horowitz, M., Levoy, M. 2005
  • Synthetic Aperture Focusing using a Shear-Warp Factorization of the Viewing Transform Vaish, V., Garg, G., Talvala, E. (., Antunez, E., Wilburn, B., Horowitz, M., Levoy, M. 2005
  • Protected interactive 3D graphics via remote rendering Annual Symposium of the ACM SIGGRAPH Koller, D., Turitzin, M., Levoy, M., Tarini, M., Croccia, G., Cignoni, P., Scopigno, R. ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY. 2004: 695–703
  • Synthetic aperture confocal imaging Annual Symposium of the ACM SIGGRAPH Levoy, M., Chen, B., Vaish, V., Horowitz, M., McDowall, I., Bolas, M. ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY. 2004: 825–34
  • High-speed videography using a dense camera array Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Wilburn, B., Joshi, N., Vaish, V., Levoy, M., Horowitz, M. IEEE COMPUTER SOC. 2004: 294–301
  • Protected Interactive 3D Graphics Via Remote Rendering Koller, D., Turitzin, M., Levoy, M., Tarini, M., Croccia, G., Cignoni, P. 2004
  • Synthetic aperture confocal imaging ACM Transactions on Graphics Levoy, M., Chen, B., Vaish, V., Horowitz, M., McDowall, I., Bolas, M. 2004; 3 (23)
  • High Speed Video Using a Dense Camera Array Wilburn, B., Joshi, N., Vaish, V., Levoy, M., Horowitz, M. 2004
  • Using plane plus parallax for calibrating dense camera arrays Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Vaish, V., Wilburn, B., Joshi, N., Levoy, M. IEEE COMPUTER SOC. 2004: 2–9
  • Interactive design of multi-perspective images for visualizing urban landscapes IEEE Visualization 2004 Conference Roman, A., Garg, G., Levoy, M. IEEE. 2004: 537–544
  • Geometrically stable sampling for the ICP algorithm 4th International Conference on 3-D Digital Imaging and Modeling (3-DIM 2003) Gelfand, N., Ikemoto, L., Rusinkiewicz, S., Levoy, M. IEEE COMPUTER SOC. 2003: 260–267
  • A Hierarchical Method for Aligning Warped Meshes Ikemoto, L., Gelfand, N., Levoy, M. 2003
  • A hierarchical method for aligning warped meshes 4th International Conference on 3-D Digital Imaging and Modeling (3-DIM 2003) Ikemoto, L., Gelfand, N., Levoy, M. IEEE COMPUTER SOC. 2003: 434–441
  • Unwrapping and visualizing cuneiform tablets IEEE COMPUTER GRAPHICS AND APPLICATIONS Anderson, S. E., Levoy, M. 2002; 22 (6): 82-88
  • Real-time 3D model acquisition SIGGRAPH 2002 Meeting Rusinkiewicz, S., Hall-Holt, O., Levoy, M. ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY. 2002: 438–46
  • Filling holes in complex surfaces using volumetric diffusion 1st International Symposium on 3D Data Processing Visualization and Transmission Davis, J., Marschner, S. R., Garr, M., Levoy, M. IEEE COMPUTER SOC. 2002: 428–438
  • Order-Independent Texture Synthesis Technical Report TR-2002-01, Computer Science Department, Stanford University Wei, L., Levoy, M. 2002
  • A practical model for subsurface light transport SIGGRAPH 2001 Jensen, H. W., Marschner, S. R., Levoy, M., Hanrahan, P. ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY. 2001: 511–518
  • An Assessment of Laser Range Measurement of Marble Surfaces Godin, G., Beraldin, J., Angelo, Rioux, M., Levoy, M., Cournoyer, L., Blais, F. 2001
  • Texture synthesis over arbitrary manifold surfaces SIGGRAPH 2001 Wei, L. Y., Levoy, M. ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY. 2001: 355–360
  • Streaming QSplat: A Viewer for Networked Visualization of Large, Dense Models Rusinkiewicz, S., Levoy, M. 2001
  • Efficient variants of the ICP algorithm 3rd International Conference on 3-D Digital Imaging and Modeling Rusinkiewicz, S., Levoy, M. IEEE COMPUTER SOC. 2001: 145–152
  • Untitled COMPUTER GRAPHICS-US Levoy, M. 2000; 34 (3): 4-4
  • Error in volume rendering paper was in exposition only IEEE COMPUTER GRAPHICS AND APPLICATIONS Levoy, M. 2000; 20 (4): 6-6
  • The digital Michelangelo project: 3D scanning of large statues Computer Graphics Annual Conference Levoy, M., Pulli, K., Curless, B., Rusinkiewicz, S., Koller, D., Pereira, L., Ginzton, M., Anderson, S., Davis, J., Ginsberg, J., Shade, J., FULK, D. ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY. 2000: 131–144
  • Fast texture synthesis using tree-structured vector quantization Computer Graphics Annual Conference Wei, L. Y., Levoy, M. ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY. 2000: 479–488
  • Digitizing the Forma Urbis Romae Siggraph Digital Campfire on Computers and Archeology Levoy, M. 2000
  • QSplat: A multiresolution point rendering system for large meshes Computer Graphics Annual Conference Rusinkiewicz, S., Levoy, M. ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY. 2000: 343–352
  • The digital Michelangelo project COMPUTER GRAPHICS FORUM Levoy, M. 1999; 18 (3): XV-XVIII
  • A Volumetric Method for Building Complex Models from Range Images Curless, B., Levoy, M. 1996
  • Light Field Rendering Levoy, M., Hanrahan, P. 1996
  • Fitting Smooth Surfaces to Dense Polygon Meshes Krishnamurthy, V., Levoy, M. 1996
  • Better optical triangulation through spacetime analysis 5th International Conference on Computer Vision Curless, B., Levoy, M. I E E E, COMPUTER SOC PRESS. 1995: 987–994
  • Feature-Based Volume Metamorphosis Lerios, A., Garfinkle, Chase, D., Levoy, M. 1995
  • 3D Painting on Scanned Surfaces Agrawala, M., Beers, A., Levoy, M. 1995
  • Polygon-Assisted JPEG and MPEG Compression of Synthetic Images Levoy, M. 1995
  • PARALLEL VISUALIZATION ALGORITHMS - PERFORMANCE AND ARCHITECTURAL IMPLICATIONS COMPUTER Singh, J. P., Gupta, A., Levoy, M. 1994; 27 (7): 45-55
  • Zippered Polygon Meshes from Range Images Turk, G., Levoy, M. 1994
  • Spreadsheets for Images Levoy, M. 1994
  • Fast Volume Rendering Using a Shear-Warp Factorization of the Viewing Transformation Lacroute, P., Levoy, M. 1994
  • Frequency Domain Volume Rendering Totsuka, T., Levoy, M. 1993
  • Volume Rendering on Scalable Shared-Memory MIMD Architectures Nieh, J., Levoy, M. 1992
  • Volume Rendering using the Fourier Projection-Slice Theorem Levoy, M. 1992
  • Efficient Ray Tracing of Volume Data ACM Transactions on Graphics Levoy, M. 1990; 9 (3): 245-261
  • Volume Rendering in Radiation Treatment Planning Levoy, M., Fuchs, H., Pizer, Stephen, M., Rosenman, J., Chaney, Edward, L., Sherouse, George, W. 1990
  • Volume Rendering by Adaptive Refinement The Visual Computer Levoy, M. 1990; 6 (1): 2-7
  • Gaze-Directed Volume Rendering Levoy, M., Whitaker, R. 1990
  • A Hybrid Ray Tracer for Rendering Polygon and Volume Data IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications Levoy, M. 1990; 10 (2): 33-40
  • Display of Surfaces from Volume Data IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications Levoy, M. 1988; 8 (3)
  • The Use of Points as a Display Primitive UNC-Chapel Hill Computer Science Technical Report Levoy, M., Whitted, T. 1985: 85-022
  • Area Flooding Algorithms SIGGRAPH 1981 Two-Dimensional Computer course notes. Levoy, M. 1981
  • Merging and Transformation of Raster Images for Cartoon Animation Wallace, Bruce, A. 1981
  • Synthetic Texturing Using Digital Filters Feibush, E., Levoy, M., Cook, R. 1980
  • A Color Animation System Based on the Multiplane Technique Levoy, M. 1977