  Correlation Plenoptic Imaging (CPI) is a novel imaging technique, that
exploits the correlations between the intensity fluctuations of light to
perform the typical tasks of plenoptic imaging (namely, refocusing out-of-focus
parts of the scene, extending the depth of field, and performing 3D
reconstruction), without entailing a loss of spatial resolution. Here, we
consider two different CPI schemes based on chaotic light, both employing ghost
imaging: the first one to image the object, the second one to image the
focusing element. We characterize their noise properties in terms of the
signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and compare their performances. We find that the
SNR can be significantly higher and easier to control in the second CPI scheme,
involving standard imaging of the object; under adequate conditions, this
scheme enables reducing by one order of magnitude the number of frames for
achieving the same SNR.
