SNAPSHOT SPECTRAL AND COLOR IMAGING USING A REGULAR DIGITAL CAMERA WITH A MONOCHROMATIC IMAGE SENSOR

Spectral imaging (SI) refers to the acquisition of the three-dimensional (3D) spectral cube of spatial and spectral data of a source object at a limited number of wavelengths in a given wavelength range. Snapshot spectral imaging (SSI) refers to the instantaneous acquisition (in a single shot) of the spectral cube, a process suitable for fast changing objects. Known SSI devices exhibit large total track length (TTL), weight and production costs and relatively low optical throughput. We present a simple SSI camera based on a regular digital camera with (i) an added diffusing and dispersing phase-only static optical element at the entrance pupil (diffuser) and (ii) tailored compressed sensing…