The way the NPR article describes this, it is no different from Uniformly Redundant Arrays, i.e. Coded Aperture Imaging: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] If you look at the 1998 paper, "Uniformly Redundant Arrays" by Busboom et al, the first sentence describes work from the 1960s:
Coded aperture imaging (CAI) (Mertz and Young, 1961; Dicke, 1968) has matured as a standard imaging technique in X–ray and Gamma-ray astronomy. It is capable of combining high angular resolution with good photon collection efficiency by using a mask consisting of transparent and opaque elements placed in front of a position sensitive detector (Figure 1).
So is the only innovation here using more pinholes, more pixels, and more processing than were around in the 1990s?
Yeah, reminds me of sparse imaging / compressive sensing too. Nothing new here except perhaps they aim for a consumer product. I would still welcome any device capable of imaging at high resolution and wide dynamic range without a lens. Lenses are so medieval, we should do better.
As their paper points out, these pinhole systems really suffer from the fact the the imaging aperture is TINY. This produces a low resolution, high depth of field image like a camera with a very "high / slow" F/# .
High degrees of multiplexing also require high bit depth measurements and low noise, driving sensor cost up.
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.
Nothing is new under the sun? (Score:5, Interesting)
Coded aperture imaging (CAI) (Mertz and Young, 1961; Dicke, 1968) has matured as a standard imaging technique in X–ray and Gamma-ray astronomy. It is capable of combining high angular resolution with good photon collection efficiency by using a mask consisting of transparent and opaque elements placed in front of a position sensitive detector (Figure 1).
So is the only innovation here using more pinholes, more pixels, and more processing than were around in the 1990s?
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, reminds me of sparse imaging / compressive sensing too. Nothing new here except perhaps they aim for a consumer product. I would still welcome any device capable of imaging at high resolution and wide dynamic range without a lens. Lenses are so medieval, we should do better.
As their paper points out, these pinhole systems really suffer from the fact the the imaging aperture is TINY. This produces a low resolution, high depth of field image like a camera with a very "high / slow" F/# .
High degrees of multiplexing also require high bit depth measurements and low noise, driving sensor cost up.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
It's the flatness and the lateral extensibility (wall paper sized) that are new for coded aperatures