Event camera system based on a liquid crystal microlens array for high dynamic range imaging in static scenes

Event cameras offer microsecond-level temporal resolution and a wide dynamic range, but the sparse events generated in static scenes limit event-based high dynamic range (HDR) imaging. In this study, we propose a liquid crystal modulated event camera (LC-MEC) system, an integrated imaging system comprising a main lens, a liquid crystal microlens array (LC-MLA), and a camera for HDR reconstruction in static scenes. By applying discrete voltages to the LC-MLA, LC-MEC modulates the system's point spread function (PSF) and introduces measurable intensity variations on the sensor plane under static illumination, enabling the construction of event streams from the continuously captured intensity sequence. HDR images are reconstructed by fusing the captured intensity frames and the constructed event streams using the temporal event fusion network (TEF-Net) architecture. Experiments demonstrate that LC-MEC produces structured and informative event streams in static scenes and achieves significant improvements in HDR reconstruction quality.