RI: Small: New Optical Frontiers for 4D Computational Imaging Systems

RI：小型：4D 计算成像系统的新光学前沿

• 批准号: 1617794
• 负责人: Yi-Ren Ng
• 金额: $ 45万
• 依托单位: University of California-Berkeley
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-07-15 至 2020-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1617794&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: RI; Small; New; Optical; Frontiers

Imaging is a core technology that feeds into intelligent sensing and reasoning about the world. This project advances the frontiers of imaging by supporting development of a broad, new space of "4D lens" designs with fundamentally superior performance. The research team develops technologies to record and process richer data about light flowing through the lens, enabling computational enhancement over the optical image quality. The research team also redesigns the lens itself, lowering the optical requirements and pushing to unprecedented performance in figures of merit such as brightness, size, weight, zoom and cost. This project extends the frontier of what is possible in diverse imaging applications, including 3D imaging, photography, scientific imaging, projection, lithography, and headsets for virtual and augmented reality, microscopy, security and defense. This research develops the theory, algorithms and tools for designing and optimizing the described 4D lenses. The enabling technical shift is the assumption that the new lenses can be used in the emerging class of computational imaging systems that work with the full 4D light field (set of all rays), rather than simply a 2D image. This project addresses several intellectual challenges theoretically and algorithmically. First, the research establishes a new formulation of the long-standing lens design problem, considering not just 2D optical image quality, but rather the computed image quality after end-to-end 4D imaging and processing. The new formulation significantly increases the complexity of evaluating and optimizing lens designs. Secondly, the research explores and maps the new frontier of lens design space that this approach opens up, to understand its growth characteristics and ultimate limits. The new design approach has potential for fundamental disruption of imaging capability, because it enables lens technology to improve continuously with technology for pixels and processing, which grow exponentially.

成像是一项核心技术，可用于对世界进行智能感知和推理。该项目通过支持开发具有基本上级性能的“4D透镜”设计的广阔新空间，推进成像的前沿。该研究团队开发的技术可以记录和处理有关流经透镜的光的更丰富的数据，从而实现光学图像质量的计算增强。研究团队还重新设计了透镜本身，降低了光学要求，并在亮度、尺寸、重量、变焦和成本等方面实现了前所未有的性能。该项目扩展了各种成像应用的可能性，包括3D成像，摄影，科学成像，投影，光刻，以及用于虚拟和增强现实，显微镜，安全和国防的耳机。 本研究开发了用于设计和优化所述4D透镜的理论、算法和工具。技术转变是假设新镜头可以用于新兴的计算成像系统，这些系统可以处理完整的4D光场（所有光线的集合），而不仅仅是2D图像。这个项目在理论上和算法上解决了几个智力挑战。首先，该研究建立了长期存在的透镜设计问题的新公式，不仅考虑2D光学图像质量，而且考虑端到端4D成像和处理后的计算图像质量。新配方显著增加了评估和优化透镜设计的复杂性。其次，探索并绘制此方法所开辟的透镜设计空间的新边界，了解其成长特性与极限。这种新的设计方法有可能从根本上破坏成像能力，因为它使透镜技术能够随着像素和处理技术的不断改进而不断改进，像素和处理技术呈指数级增长。