High-resolution imaging system with an annular aperture of coded phase masks for endoscopic applications

Partial aperture imaging is a combination of two different techniques; coded aperture imaging and imaging through an aperture that is only a part of the complete disk, commonly used as the aperture of most imaging systems. In the present study, the partial aperture is a ring where the imaging through this aperture resolves small details of the observed scene similarly to the full disk aperture with the same diameter. However, unlike the full aperture, the annular aperture enables using the inner area of the ring for other applications. In this study, we consider the implementation of this special aperture in medical imaging instruments, such as endoscopes, for imaging internal cavities in general and of the human body in particular. By using this annular aperture, it is possible to transfer through the internal open circle of the ring other elements such as surgical tools, fibers and illumination devices. In the proposed configuration, light originated from a source point passes through an annular coded aperture and creates a sparse, randomly distributed, intensity dot pattern on the camera plane. A combination of the dot patterns, each one recorded only once, is used as the point spread hologram of the imaging system. The image is reconstructed digitally by cross correlation between the object intensity response and the point spread hologram.