Single camera based dual-view light-field particle imaging velocimetry with isotropic resolution

High-resolution and large-scale three-dimensional measurements of the flow field are essential for us to uncover the underlying fluid mechanism. Currently, the mainstream modalities, such as tomographic particle imaging velocimetry and conventional light-field particle imaging velocimetry (LF-PIV), that can perform volumetric measurement suffer system complexity and low axial resolution, respectively, and cannot realize volumetric imaging at isotropic resolution with only one camera. Here, we proposed a dual-view LF-PIV system that can achieve three-dimensional acquisition at isotropic spatial resolution with only one camera. We comprehensively assessed the feasibility of the system through imaging of sparsely distributed beads, and real vortex flows generated via stir bar. We showed that our dual-view LF-PIV system resolved beads with isotropic resolution, reported lower errors of the divergence, and revealed the three-dimensional vortex field more accurately than the conventional system. To be the first PIV system that can achieve isotropic resolution volumetric imaging without adding extra cost in cameras, data acquisition, and hardware synchronization and scanning, our dual-view LF-PIV should open up avenues for large-scale high-resolution flow dynamics imaging.