Patent · US Expired

Digital imaging assembly and methods thereof

US7282716B2 · kind B2 · utility

4Cited by
69References
45Claims
0Family size

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Key dates

Filing dateNov 5, 2004
Grant dateOct 16, 2007
Priority date
Expiry dateJun 25, 2025

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG02B27/48
  • WIPO fieldOptics
  • WIPO sectorInstruments

Abstract

A coherent radiation imaging system that produces digital images with a reduced amount of speckle. Radiation from a long coherence length source is used to form an image of a sample. The output coherent wave is temporally divided into a plurality of wavelets. The spatial phase of each wavelet is then modulated a known and different amount. Each phase modulated wavelet illuminates the sample and is perturbed by its interaction with the sample. A spatial phase map of each perturbed wavelet is then created and converted to a sample image with an image reconstruction program. The plurality of sample images thus formed is statistically averaged to form a final averaged image. The high frequency speckle that is not optically resolvable tends to average to zero with continual statistical averaging, leaving only the optically resolvable lower frequency phase information.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.