Overcoming sensor limitations: scientists unveil a new optical imaging method

Guoan Zheng, Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Director of the Center for Biomedical and Bioengineering Innovation (CBBI) at the University of Connecticut (USA), has released research that could redefine optical imaging in science, medicine, and industry. This was reported by UNN with reference to phys.org.

Details

At the heart of this breakthrough is a long-standing technical problem. Synthetic aperture imaging – a technique that allowed the Event Horizon Telescope to image a black hole – works by coherently combining measurements from multiple separated sensors to simulate a much larger imaging aperture.

The Multi-scale Aperture Synthesizing Imager (MASI) solves this problem. Instead of forcing multiple optical sensors to work in perfect physical synchronization – a task that would require nanometer precision – MASI allows each sensor to measure light independently and then uses computational algorithms to synchronize the data.

According to the scientist, it's like several photographers taking pictures of the same scene, but not as ordinary photographs, but as raw measurements of the properties of light waves, and then software combines these independent shots into a single ultra-high-resolution image.

This computational phase synchronization scheme eliminates the need for rigid interferometric setups that have hitherto hindered the practical application of optical synthetic aperture systems. MASI differs from traditional optical imaging in two revolutionary ways. Instead of relying on lenses to focus light onto a sensor, MASI uses an array of encoded sensors located in different parts of the diffraction plane.

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