Phase coded optics for computational imaging systems

Computational imaging technology can modify the acquisition process to capture extra information at the sensor that can be used for various photographic applications, including imaging with extended depth of field, refocusing photographs after the image is taken or depth extraction for 3D applications. In this paper, we propose a generalized phase coded imaging which involves encoding of the captured light and post-capture decoding for improved features and performance. Phase coded optics utilizes optics to purposely encode specific object information in a more efficient way, which is the most flexible and cost effective solution for correcting optical aberrations or any other optical functions. Practically any shape can be generated on any lens surface for shaping the point spread function of the lens module to achieve desired image results. Phase coded optics is a more general scheme than previous proposed for finding the optimal solutions in digital imaging systems and has proven to be an enabling technology to the imaging problem. Some of the possible applications based on this technique are also investigated in this paper.