title: Panoramic monocentric imaging using fiber-coupled focal planes.
abstract: Monocentric lenses provide high-resolution wide field of view imaging onto a hemispherical image surface, which can be coupled to conventional focal planes using fiber-bundle image transfer. We show the design and characterization of a 2-glass concentric F/1.0 lens, and describe integration of 5 Mpixel 1.75µm pitch back-side illuminated color CMOS sensors with 2.5µm pitch fiber bundles, then show the fiber-coupled lens compares favorably in both resolution and light collection to a 10x larger conventional F/4 wide angle photographic lens. We describe assembly of the monocentric lens and 6 adjacent sensors with focus optomechanics into an extremely compact 30Mpixel panoramic imager with a 126° "letterbox" format field of view.
authors.forename: Igor
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Stamenov
authors.forename: Ashkan
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Arianpour
authors.forename: Stephen J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Olivas
authors.forename: Ilya P
authors.initials: IP
authors.lastname: Agurok
authors.forename: Adam R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.forename: Ronald A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Stack
authors.forename: Rick L
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Morrison
authors.forename: Joseph E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Ford
mesh_terms: D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D005336:Fiber Optic Technology / Q000295:instrumentation*; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000295:instrumentation*; D007909:Lenses; D010781:Photography / Q000295:instrumentation*; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000295:instrumentation*