Its entirely possible but not likely that this is the camera we will see this fall at photokina, or maybe a demo/development teaser. I did not read every word in the patent, but skimmed thru several pages reading to determine exactly what they were doing.
As previously mentioned, its a light field camera, but it is unique in that it takes advantage of photo sensors that are divided into 2, 4, or even many more portions to form the light field image. Thus, the apparent focus area can be moved according to the combination of sub pixel images selected.
It is very complicated with several optional ways to get at the same end result.
The problem with conventional light field cameras comes with the huge file size and enormous processing difficulty. The patent gets around the obstacle by creating a smaller sized image from each of the multiple pixels and combining them as needed to alter the point of focus.
Its a nice way to get around the issue of processing a light field camera image, but the point of focus from the sub pixels in a 5D MK IV only changes a fraction of a inch.
The final light field image must still be created by a external computer, which makes sense, since the photographer would want to move the point of focus to suit his needs.
From the 20th page, this paragraph is the hint as to the purpose of the patent. I used OCR to convert it to text, so it may come out a bit distorted.
BACKGROUND ART
[0002] There are known to be image capture apparatuses
in which an exit pupil of a shooting lens (imaging optical
system) is divided into multiple pupil regions, and according
to which multiple images that each correspond to one pupil
region can be generated with one shooting operation (U.S.
Pat. No. 4,410,804). These multiple images are images with
parallax (parallax images), and therefore are pieces of information
representing not only the spatial distribution but also
the angular distribution of the light intensity, and have
properties similar to data known as light field (LF) data and
light space data.
[0003] Ren Ng et al, "Light Field Photography with a
Hand-Held Plenoptic Camera", Stanford Tech Report CTSR
2005 February , 2005 Apr. 20) discloses a refocus technique
in which the in-focus position of the captured image is
changed after shooting by using LF data to combine images
in an imaging plane (virtual imaging plane) different from
that at the time of shooting.