Compact and thin multi-lens system for machine vision applications

Abstract

Compact imaging devices are desirable in many different machine vision applications. For instance, in inspection for semiconductor manufacturing systems, the reduction in feature size demands lenses with a small working distance but a wide field of view. An integrated computational imaging system has proved to be advantageous in this respect, as it integrates the optics, optoelectronics, and signal processing together in the system architecture. This allows for unconventional optical systems that require further image processing to reconstruct the images, but can be made to satisfy more stringent design constraints such as size, power, and cost. In this paper, we focus on a multi-lens optical architecture. We explain the possible designs and discuss the reconstruction of images, as we need to combine the multiple low-resolution images formed from the different optical paths into a high-resolution image. We will also explore its applicability in various machine vision applications. © 2008 SPIE-IS&T.