Imaging system and method for providing extended depth of focus, range extraction and super resolved imaging
US8040604B2 · kind B2 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Jan 11, 2010 |
| Grant date | Oct 18, 2011 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Jan 11, 2030 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG02B2207/129
- WIPO fieldOptics
- WIPO sectorInstruments
Abstract
An imaging system is presented for imaging objects within a field of view of the system. The imaging system comprises an imaging lens arrangement, a light detector unit at a certain distance from the imaging lens arrangement, and a control unit connectable to the output of the detection unit. The imaging lens arrangement comprises an imaging lens and an optical element located in the vicinity of the lens aperture, said optical element introducing aperture coding by an array of regions differently affecting a phase of light incident thereon which are randomly distributed within the lens aperture, thereby generating an axially-dependent randomized phase distribution in the Optical Transfer Function (OTF) of the imaging system resulting in an extended depth of focus of the imaging system. The control unit is configured to decode the sampled output of the detection unit by using the random aperture coding to thereby extract 3D information of the objects in the field of view of the light detector unit.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.