| NSF Org: |
ECCS Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | May 9, 2014 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | May 9, 2014 |
| Award Number: | 1351896 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Ruyan Guo
ECCS Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems ENG Directorate for Engineering |
| Start Date: | June 1, 2014 |
| End Date: | May 31, 2019 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $400,000.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $400,000.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1608 4TH ST STE 201 BERKELEY CA US 94710-1749 (510)643-3891 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
2150 Shattuck Ave, St. 313 Berkeley CA US 94704-5940 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | EPMD-ElectrnPhoton&MagnDevices |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.041 |
ABSTRACT
Most light that people observe (e.g. light bulbs, sun light) is only partially coherent, whereas light from a laser is coherent. This project aims to design and build optical systems for imaging partially coherent light. If successful, this research will lead to novel cameras with the ability to digitally refocus and remove aberrations in images. It would also make possible to synthetically propagate light through any optical system (e.g. a microscope or camera) and replace many optical elements via computation. The knowledge developed by this work will lead to new imaging techniques for commercial products and research instrumentation tools. Research results from this project will be used to teach optics and coherence theory to a broad audience through a collection of demos that will be disseminated at outreach events and on popular websites. The long-term educational goals of the PI include promoting hands-on science experience to the next generation of scientists and engineers.
The objective of this research is to build experimental and computational schemes for imaging four-dimensional (4D) partially spatially coherent light. The approach is to use computational imaging, whereby hardware and post-processing algorithms are designed simultaneously within the framework of phase space optics. Smart coding strategies will be developed for imaging systems based on spatial light modulators, in order to enable fast capture of high-resolution coherence information in 4D. Since partially coherent light beams have many more degrees-of-freedom, there is an opportunity for encoding and decoding greater amounts of information. This will lead to the ability to digitally focus images taken with lens-less cameras, digitally remove aberrations, and digitally filter images to extract new information in post-processing. This project will benefit scientific discovery by providing simple imaging systems for visualizing coherence, an invisible quantity of fundamental importance in optical sciences.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
This project aimed to develop high-dimensional imaging techniques for measuring optical spatial coherence properties in four dimensions (4D). Spatial coherence is a fundamental property of light and its measurement is required for predicting behavior of light through an optical system. Measurements in 3D can be used for digital refocusing, 3D imaging, removal of scattering effects and digital correction of image aberrations.
Most light, other than laser light, is spatially partially coherent (e.g. light bulbs, LEDs), leading to complicated behavior upon propagation and optical manipulation in imaging systems. Where coherence properties can be measured, a complete description of the light can be obtained, which may enable computational correction of imaging systems. In this project, we designed methods for efficient and practical 4D spatial coherenc measurements using custom-built optical systems.
We developed coded apertures and computational inverse problems in order to achieve high-resolution imaging of 4D coherence properties. We co-designed the optical hardware and software algorithms for efficient and fast imaging. Experimental and theoretical demonstrations were used to verify our methods on known and unknown sample objects.
The broader impacts of this project include new tools for biological microscopy, physics and new knowledge about the coherence properties of light. We are working to implement our methods in standard biological labs for routine microscopy experiments with new types of information available to be imaged. Educational goals taught and promoted optics in classrooms and for the general public relating to the basic properties of light, including coherence.
Last Modified: 08/10/2019
Modified by: Laura Waller
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