Feature
Programmed Diffraction for Intelligent Imaging and Sensing
Advances in artificial intelligence have opened a powerful approach: compact optical networks of diffractive surfaces that can rapidly achieve specific tasks via direct, energy-efficient processing of light.
An AI-assisted artistic depiction of diffractive surfaces. Diffractive networks enable direct processing of visual information without digital recording/storage and processing of the data.
For centuries, diffraction of light has been at the heart of imaging and sensing systems. Controlling and harnessing diffraction through optical elements, computational algorithms or both have been the focus of a range of systems and techniques, including holography, microscopy, photography, spectroscopy and sensing instrumentation. Most such designs used physical intuition to engineer light diffraction and thereby improve performance metrics such as signal-to-noise ratio, resolution, depth of field, field of view (FOV) or measurement speed.
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