Compact multi-aperture imaging with high angular resolution

Abstract

Received Month X, XXXX; revised Month X, XXXX; accepted Month X, XXXX; posted Month X, XXXX (Doc. ID XXXXX); published Month X, XXXX Previous reports have demonstrated that it is possible to emulate the imaging function of a single conventional lens with an NxN array of identical lenslets to provide an N-fold reduction in imaging-system track length. This approach limits the application to low-resolution imaging. We highlight how using an array of dissimilar lenslets, with an array width that can be much wider than the detector array, high-resolution super-resolved imaging is possible. We illustrate this approach with a ray-traced design and optimization of a long-wave infrared system employing a 3x3 array of free-form lenslets to provide a four-fold reduction in track length compared to a baseline system. Simulations of image recovery show that recovered image quality is comparable to that of the baseline system.

Superimposed multi-resolution imaging

“…This approach also enables arbitrary foveal ratios, however, if the width of the combined apertures fundamentally cannot exceed the sensor width, then the light-gathering and angular resolution will be limited (as sensor width then limits the f -number). It is possible to overcome this limitation to an extent however [18], but the obvious unbridgeable drawback of this strategy is that, if the sensor is segmented, the number of pixels per optical channel is reduced.…”

360° snapshot imaging with a convex array of long-wave infrared cameras

“…The latter is a paradigmatic example of parallelized cameras as a means of alleviating optical complexity through computation. This parallelization can also be implemented in multi-aperture [6], and integral imaging [7]. Multi-scale imaging reduces the optical aberrations at a local region of the FOV by creating a curved focal plane that is imaged through multiple apertures.…”

Compact multichannel infrared camera integrated in an operational detector dewar cooler assembly

“…Two different approaches can be distinguished. On the one hand, each channel captures a low-resolution image of the overall field of view (FOV), which is known as the thin observation module by bound optics (TOMBO) principle [3][4][5][6][7]. If the spectral content of the subimages is non-redundant [8], super-resolution techniques can be applied to retrieve the high frequency content of the scene [3,[9][10][11][12][13][14].…”

“…Most of the concepts cited above operate in the visible spectral range, and only few address the infrared spectral range (refs. [4,5,7] work in the long-wave infrared (LWIR) band).…”