Optical performance test and validation of microcameras in multiscale, gigapixel imagers

Abstract

Wide field-of-view gigapixel imaging systems capable of diffraction-limited resolution and video-rate acquisition have a broad range of applications, including sports event broadcasting, security surveillance, astronomical observation, and bioimaging. The complexity of the system integration of such devices demands precision optical components that are fully characterized and qualified before being integrated into the final system. In this work, we present component and assembly level characterizations of microcameras in our first gigapixel camera, the AWARE-2. Based on the results of these measurements, we revised the optical design and assembly procedures to construct the second generation system, the AWARE-2 Retrofit, which shows significant improvement in image quality.

Computational optical imaging: challenges, opportunities, new trends, and emerging applications

“…Since Brady and Hagen (2009) proposed the theory of multiscale imaging in 2009, this imaging method has received extensive attention from researchers worldwide. Since 2012, the AWARE-2 (Golish et al, 2012;Youn et al, 2014), AWARE-10 (Nakamura et al, 2013;Marks et al, 2014), and AWARE-40 (Nakamura et al, 2013) were developed. It takes only 18 s to actually shoot a single photograph, which effectively realizes high-resolution imaging with a large field of view.…”

“…On the basis of AWARE-2 (Golish et al, 2012;Youn et al, 2014) and AWARE-10 (Nakamura et al, 2013), Brady developed an AWARE-40 (Nakamura et al, 2013;Marks et al, 2014) imaging system. Unlike AWARE-2 and AWARE-10, the primary mirror in AWARE-40 adopted a double Gaussian-like structure instead of a spherical lens, and its pixel count was up to 3.6 billion, with a resolution of up to 5.4 cm @ 5 km.…”

Design of a Concentric Multi-Scale Zoom Optical System Based on Wide Object Distance and High-Precision Imaging

“…Brady et al first proposed a concentric multi-scale optical imaging system [ 9 , 10 ], in which each secondary relay imaging group in the system is identical, and the local aberrations corrected by the secondary relay imaging groups at different field-of-view locations are also identical; they developed three prototypes: AWARE-2 [ 6 , 11 ], AWARE-10 [ 12 ], and AWARE-40 [ 13 ]. The front system of AWARE-2 is a double-layer concentric spherical lens, the secondary system is a relay imaging array of 98 micro-cameras, and the combined focal length of the entire system is 34.2 mm with an F-number of 2.1 and a FOV of 120° × 50°.…”