Lensless Photography with only an image sensor
This work enables new camera form factors by eliminating optics, though it is incremental as it builds on computational imaging techniques.
The researchers tackled the problem of imaging without traditional optics by using a bare CMOS sensor and computational reconstruction, achieving video imaging at the sensor's native frame rate and analyzing object distance effects.
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.