Acousto-optic image scanner

摘要

An acousto-optic image scanner employing pulses of acoustic surface waves which propagate along the length of a piezoelectric crystal performing as a traveling phase grating to diffract a collimated monochromatic light beam which has a spatial light distribution corresponding to the information content of a line of the image. The light beam propagates through the width of the crystal thus providing an extensive electro-optic interaction length for increased diffraction efficiency. The light intensity at a first-order spot is detected to provide a temporal signal representative of the light distribution of an image line. Scanning of colored images can be accomplished by utilizing a chromatic beam and detecting the light at the first-order spots corresponding to the three different wavelengths present in the illuminating beam.