The assumption that the speed of light is infinite underlies many established models in computer graphics and vision. Researchers exploring time-of-flight based sensors are moving into a domain that implicitly requires relaxation of this assumption. The classic rendering equation provides a rigorous foundation for understanding light transport, but fails to encompass the transient effects of light propagation at finite speeds. In this paper, we will introduce a physically-relevant generalization of the rendering equation and a method for approximating this equation, and define a summary measure of transient light patterns, which is used as a basis for general sensor model.

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• Adam M. Smith, James Skorupski, James Davis, “Understanding Video at 30 Billion Frames Per Second with Transient Rendering,” Poster at Bay Area Vision Meetup (BAVM 2009), 2009. [link]

• Smith, Adam, James Skorupski, and James Davis. 2008. “Transient Rendering.” Technical Report UCSC-SOE-08-26. Computer Science Department, University of California, Santa Cruz. [link]