Claims
- 1. An imaging system, comprising:
a sensor having a plurality of receptors; and a lens configuration that provides a mapping between diffraction spot size to size of the respective receptors.
- 2. The system of claim 1, the receptors are pixels.
- 3. The system of claim 1, the size of a diffraction spot is about equal to size of a receptor.
- 4. The system of claim 1, the lens configuration provides for about a 1:1 correlation of diffraction spot size to individual receptor size.
- 5. The system of claim 4, the respective size correlation is between a matching range of about 90% to 110%.
- 6. The system of claim 4, a respective diffraction diameter is less than a distance defined by a diameter of a receptor and a half of a distance between adjacent receptors.
- 7. The system of claim 1, the lens configuration provides for a correlation of pitch associated with the respective plurality of receptors to diffraction-limited spot(s) within an object field of view.
- 8. The system of claim 7, the pitch is unit-mapped to about the size of the diffraction-limited spot(s) within the object field of view.
- 9. The system of claim 1, the lens configuration comprising at least one of an aspherical lens, a multiple lens configuration, a fiber optic taper, an image conduit, and a holographic optic element.
- 10. The system of claim 1, the lens configuration comprising a first lens positioned toward an object field of view and a second lens positioned toward the sensor, the first lens is sized to have a focal length smaller than the second lens.
- 11. The system of claim 10, the sizing of the first lens to the second lens provides a an area-based mapping of the respective receptors to diffraction spot size within an object field of view.
- 12. The system of claim 1, the sensor is at least one of a digital sensor, an analog sensor, a charge coupled device (CCD) sensor, CMOS sensor, charge injection device (CID) sensor, an array sensor, and a linear scan sensor.
- 13. The system of claim 1, the lens configuration provides a working distance range of about 0.5 millimeters or more to about 20 millimeters or less.
- 14. The system of claim 1, further comprising an illumination source that illuminates one or more objects within an object field of view.
- 15. The system of claim 14, the illumination source further comprises a light emitting diode (LED).
- 16. The system of claim 14, the illumination source further comprises at least one of wavelength-specific lighting, broad-band lighting, continuous lighting, strobed lighting, Kohler illumination, Abbe illumination, phase-contrast illumination, darkfield illumination, brightfield illumination and Epi illumination.
- 17. The system of claim 14, the illumination source further comprising at least one of coherent light, non-coherent light, visible light and non-visible light.
- 18. The system of claim 14, the illumination source is an infrared light source.
- 19. The system of claim 14, the illumination source is an ultra-violet light source.
- 20. A microscope comprising the system of claim 1.
- 21. A portable computing device comprising the system of claim 1.
- 22. A camera comprising the system of claim 1.
- 23. The system of claim 1, the lens configuration further comprising a holographic optical element.
- 24. The system of claim 1, further comprising a holographic optical element.
- 25. A digital microscope, comprising:
a sensor with a plurality of pixels; a k-space filter that correlates size of the respective pixels to diffraction spot size.
- 26. The microscope of claim 25, the k-space filter sizes diffraction spot area to be substantially equal to an area size of a respective pixel of the sensor.
- 27. The microscope of claim 25, further comprising an objective lens and a transfer lens, wherein a distance between the lens defines k-space for the k-space filter.
- 28. The microscope of claim 27, the k-space filter quantizes spectral components of both an object and an image associated with the object in k-space.
- 29. The microscope of claim 25, the k-space filter unit matches an object and image space.
- 30. The microscope of claim 29, the unit matching is for substantially all image and object fields.
- 31. The system of claim 27, the objective lens and the transfer lens are arranged to provide a reduction in size of a sensor array as projected to an object field of view.
- 32. The microscope of claim 25, further comprising a light emitting diode as an illumination source.
- 33. The microscope of claim 25, further comprising a holographic optical component.
- 34. An imaging system, comprising:
means for mapping sensor pixel size of a sensor to size of a diffraction-spot in an object field of view; and means for displaying an output of the sensor.
- 35. The system of claim 34, further comprising means for processing the output of the sensor.
- 36. A method that facilitates microscope optimization, comprising:
selecting a plurality of lenses; and configuring the lenses to have diffraction-limited characteristics at about a same size of respective pixels of a sensor.
- 37. The system of claim 36, further comprising selecting the lens as a function of spatial frequencies within k-space.
PRIORITY CLAIM
[0001] This application is a continuation application of Ser. No. 10/403,744, filed on Mar. 31, 2003, and entitled IMAGING SYSTEM AND METHODOLOGY EMPLOYING RECIPROCAL SPACE OPTICAL DESIGN, which is a continuation application of U.S. Ser. No. 09/900,218, filed on Jul. 6, 2001, and entitled IMAGING SYSTEM AND METHODOLOGY EMPLOYING RECIPROCAL SPACE OPTICAL DESIGN, and now issued as U.S. Pat. No. 6,664,528. These related applications are incorporated herein by reference.
Continuations (2)
|
Number |
Date |
Country |
Parent |
10403744 |
Mar 2003 |
US |
Child |
10746622 |
Dec 2003 |
US |
Parent |
09900218 |
Jul 2001 |
US |
Child |
10403744 |
Mar 2003 |
US |