An investigation of extended depth-of-field camera with optimized phase mask and digital restoration is presented. The goal of this paper is to implement the wavefront coding technique without affecting much of the original design, and the design has taken the complexity of imaging system into consideration. The optimized strength of cubic phase mask (CPM) is based on the analytical optimal solution for the task-based imaging system [J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 25, 1064 (2008)]. The noisy intermediate images of CPM system with highest spatial frequency of interest can be effectively restored by vector-based Richardson-Lucy algorithm. Restoration from the system with generalized CPM produces precise image position than the system with CPM does. In general, the CPM system procures modulation transfer function higher than 0.195 in the whole depth-of-field, and the mean squared error of the restored images are less than 5 %.

Cubic phase wavefront coding technique is applied to an imaging system with the aim of extending the depth of field (DOF). The design is based on the wavefront coding method proposed by Dowski and Cathey 1. The method employs a cubic phase mask (CPM) to modify the point spread function (PSF) of the imaging system under incoherent illumination such that the PSF of the system is formed as an isosceles right triangle, which makes the PSF insensitive to defocus. Researchers have found the optimized values of cubic phase coefficient and the exit pupil distance for the given specifications for solving wavefront coded task-based imaging problem 2. The extended DOF design is usually based on placing a phase mask exactly in the pupil plane of the imaging system. However, this is not always practical because the complex design of the imaging system leads to a limited practical advantage of this kind of arrangement. In this work, the influence of phase mask position upon wavefront coding technique in the doublet imaging system is studied. The main goal is to find the position where to place the CPM in the imaging system, which type of arrangement can effectively improve the modulation transfer function. Finally, we compare two system configurations, front aperture stop and rear aperture stop in designing the doublet wavefront coded system.

A Focused Plenoptic Camera in Galilean configuration is studied and its aberrations behavior is interpreted with the Nodal Aberration Theory (NAT). Sequential ray tracing is applied to individual optical channels constituted by the camera objective and individual decentered microlenses. The wavefront aberration field is retrieved at the exit pupil of the optical channels and is analyzed through the Zernike Fringe decomposition technique. Decentered optical channels show nodes in the field-dependence of different Zernike coefficients approximating the wavefront aberration field. The nodal behavior is a consequence of the loss of rotational symmetry in a decentered optical channel due to the displacement of a microlens with respect to the mechanical axis of the camera.