SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHIC IMAGING SPECTROMETRY WITH SEGMENTED SPECTRUM

摘要

A system and method for producing spectrally segmented images of object fields (16). In one embodiment the system includes an optical system (4) that focuses light received from an object field (16) along a focal plane with a field stop (20) positioned within the optical system (4) that has plural apertures for selectively transmitting the light from the object field (16). A diffractive element (24) is positioned within the optical system (4) to spectrally spread, along the focal plane, the light transmitted through the apertures. The apertures can be parallel slots (60) or geometrically arranges holes (106). The plural apertures are spaced such that the spectrally spread light transmitted through any given aperture and incident upon the focal plane does not overlap on the focal plane with the light transmitted through any other aperture. The diffractive element (24) may spread light across one or more directions. In one embodiment, a processor (8) is coupled to a plurality of pixels in a focal plane array (6). A memory (10) for storing image data organized as a hyper-spectral cube.