FlatCam: Thin, Bare-Sensor Cameras using Coded Aperture and Computation
This enables thin cameras for applications like mobile devices or surveillance, though it is incremental as it builds on coded aperture imaging.
FlatCam tackles the problem of creating thin, lensless cameras by using a coded mask placed close to a bare sensor array, with a computational algorithm to reconstruct images, and demonstrates prototypes at visible and infrared wavelengths achieving thin form-factors.
FlatCam is a thin form-factor lensless camera that consists of a coded mask placed on top of a bare, conventional sensor array. Unlike a traditional, lens-based camera where an image of the scene is directly recorded on the sensor pixels, each pixel in FlatCam records a linear combination of light from multiple scene elements. A computational algorithm is then used to demultiplex the recorded measurements and reconstruct an image of the scene. FlatCam is an instance of a coded aperture imaging system; however, unlike the vast majority of related work, we place the coded mask extremely close to the image sensor that can enable a thin system. We employ a separable mask to ensure that both calibration and image reconstruction are scalable in terms of memory requirements and computational complexity. We demonstrate the potential of the FlatCam design using two prototypes: one at visible wavelengths and one at infrared wavelengths.