Experimental realization of an imaging system with an extended depth of field.
We describe the experimental realization of an all-optical imaging system with an extended depth of field (DOF). The core of the system is a phase mask consisting of 16 Fresnel lenses (FLs) that are spatially multiplexed and mutually exclusive. Because each FL, in tandem with the primary lens, is designed to produce a sharp image for a specific object plane location, jointly the FLs achieve a wide DOF. However, the resultant image exhibits reduced resolution. The acquired image, onto which we did not apply any postprocessing, clearly is sharper than that acquired with a clear-aperture imaging system with the same pupil size.
Ben-Eliezer
Eyal
E
School of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel. eyalbe@eng.tau.ac.il
Marom
Emanuel
E
Konforti
Naim
N
Zalevsky
Zeev
Z