CIF: Small: Lens-Free Imaging: Can Signal Processing Replace Lenses?

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The basic design of the camera has remained unchanged for centuries. To acquire an image, light from the scene is focused using a lens onto an image sensor. This design has served users well in a broad range of applications, with lenses forming the bedrock of current imaging practice. Unfortunately, lenses also introduce a number of limitations. First, while image sensors are typically thin, cameras end up being thick due to the lens complexity and the large distance between the lens and sensor required to achieve focus. Second, while Moore?s Law has cut the cost of image sensors exponentially over time, lenses, and thus cameras, do not benefit from this exponential scaling, particularly at wavelengths further into the infrared and ultraviolet, where inexpensive glass and plastics cannot be used. Third, lens-based cameras invariably require post-fabrication assembly, resulting in manufacturing inefficiencies.In this project, the PIs develop new camera architectures that dispense with lenses completely. Lens-free cameras retain the high light-throughput of lens-based cameras, have a thin form factor, and are amenable to direct fabrication while operating over a wide spectral range. The design replaces the lens with a series of coded masks placed almost immediately atop a bare conventional sensor and uses a computational algorithm to recover the image from the sensor measurements. The goal of this project is a modern signal processing based framework for the design, optimization and development of lens free and refractive optics-free imaging systems that will establish the fundamental limits of imaging with such systems. This will revolutionize imaging capabilities and, for the first time, enable thin, cameras that can directly be fabricated using traditional semiconductor fabrication tools.