“Smart” optics eliminates focus problems

I read in the July 24th, 2008 edition of “Electronic Design”(ED) magazine that Tessera Technologies are developing a computational method of bringing an image into focus.

The work is aimed at cellphone cameras, an imaging application where there’s no room for a sophisticated lens, and relies on defocusing the whole image, then using an algorithm to bring it back in to focus. This overcomes the depth-of-field limitations that become particularly severe in low light conditions.

Adding this kind of “smarts” into a “smart” camera would go a long way towards making a machine vision system easier to set up and more robust in operation. In fact I’d go so far as to say that the first vision company to lock up a partnership with Tessera will have a huge marketing advantage over the competition.

Also in the ED article, is a brief discussion of the relationship between pixel size and image. It’s good information for anyone shopping for a camera, so take a minute to check it out.