Proof-of-concept demonstration of a miniaturized three-channel multiresolution imaging system

Abstract

Multichannel imaging systems have several potential applications such as multimedia, surveillance, medical imaging and machine vision, and have therefore been a hot research topic in recent years. Such imaging systems, inspired by natural compound eyes, have many channels, each covering only a portion of the total field-of-view of the system. As a result, these systems provide a wide field-of-view (FOV) while having a small volume and a low weight. Different approaches have been employed to realize a multichannel imaging system. We demonstrated that the different channels of the imaging system can be designed in such a way that they can have each different imaging properties (angular resolution, FOV, focal length). Using optical ray-tracing software (CODE V), we have designed a miniaturized multiresolution imaging system that contains three channels each consisting of four aspherical lens surfaces fabricated from PMMA material through ultra-precision diamond tooling. The first channel possesses the largest angular resolution (0.0096°) and narrowest FOV (7°), whereas the third channel has the widest FOV (80°) and the smallest angular resolution (0.078°). The second channel has intermediate properties. Such a multiresolution capability allows different image processing algorithms to be implemented on the different segments of an image sensor. This paper presents the experimental proofof-concept demonstration of the imaging system using a commercial CMOS sensor and gives an in-depth analysis of the obtained results. Experimental images captured with the three channels are compared with the corresponding simulated images. The experimental MTF of the channels have also been calculated from the captured images of a slanted edge target test. This multichannel multiresolution approach opens the opportunity for low-cost compact imaging systems that can be equipped with smart imaging capabilities.

Artificial compound eye: a survey of the state-of-the-art

“…The prototype of (Tanida et al 2000) planar artificial compound eyes is either apposition compound eye or superposition compound eye. To date, a lot of planar artificial compound eyes have been proposed (Tanida et al 2000;Duparré et al 2004b, a;Duparré and Wippermann 2006;Duparré and Völkel 2006;Duparré et al 2005dDuparré et al , a, 2004cDuparré et al , 2005bWippermann et al 2005;Brückner et al 2007Brückner et al , 2008Druart et al 2008;Brückner et al 2010a, b;Bräuer et al 2011;Brückner et al 2011;Meyer et al 2011;Stollberg et al 2009;Duparré et al 2008;Druart et al 2009;Di et al 2009;Leitel et al 2010;Ueno et al 2013;Brückner et al 2010c;Ogata et al 1994;Carr et al 2004;Hornsey et al 2004;Kinoshita et al 2005;Christensen et al 2006;Wippermann et al 2006;Yang et al 2009;Sieler et al 2010;Fallah and Karimzadeh 2010;Dunkel et al 2014;Belay et al 2014). In what follows, several typical planar artificial compound eyes are selected to discuss the design principle.…”