2017/02/21 by Ganghun Kim, Kyle Isaacson, Kyle J. Isaacson +3 · 1 voice · 1 citation
Computer Science · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Optical Sensing Technologies #Digital Holography and Microscopy #Image Processing Techniques and Applications #cs.CV #physics.optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1364/ao.56.006450
arxiv created 2017/02/21 · openalex publication_date 2017/08/01 · arxiv updated 2018/05/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Photography usually requires optics in conjunction with a recording device (an image sensor). Eliminating the optics could lead to new form factors for cameras. Here, we report a simple demonstration of imaging using a bare CMOS sensor that utilizes computation. The technique relies on the space variant point-spread functions resulting from the interaction of a point source in the field of view with the image sensor. These space-variant point-spread functions are combined with a reconstruction algorithm in order to image simple objects displayed on a discrete LED array as well as on an LCD screen. We extended the approach to video imaging at the native frame rate of the sensor. Finally, we performed experiments to analyze the parametric impact of the object distance. Improving the sensor designs and reconstruction algorithms can lead to useful cameras without optics.