Design of a multichannel, multiresolution smart imaging system

Appl Opt. 2012 Jul 10;51(20):4810-7. doi: 10.1364/AO.51.004810.

Abstract

This paper presents the design of a multichannel imaging system where the different optical channels have a different angular resolution and field-of-view. Such an imaging system is able to resolve fine details in a small region of interest through the channel that has the highest angular resolution (0.0096°) while controlling the surrounding region through the channel that has the widest field-of-view (2×40°). An interesting feature of such a multichannel, multiresolution imaging system is that various image processing algorithms can be applied at different segments of the image sensor. We have designed a three channel imaging system where each optical channel consists of four aspheric lens surfaces. These three imaging channels share a single image sensor with a resolution of 1440×960 and a 10 μm pixel size. All imaging channels have diffraction-limited performance ensuring good overall image quality.