Methods and apparati for spectral imaging using an interferometer of the translating type in which a finite number of coherent beams interfere mutually

摘要

A method and an apparatus for analyzing an optical image of a scene to determine the spectral intensity of each pixel thereof, comprising: collecting and collimating incident light from the scene; passing the light through an interferometer wherein the light is first split into a finite plurality of coherent beams which travel along different optical paths inside the interferometer and then recombine to interfere with each other, the interferometer thereby outputting modulated light corresponding to a predetermined set of linear combinations of the spectral intensity of the light emitted from each pixel; focusing the light outputted from the interferometer on a two dimensional detector array; and processing the output of the detector array to determine the spectral intensity of each pixel thereof; the interferometer being of the translating type in which the optical path difference is varied to modulate the light by translating an element of the interferometer, such that at each instant each detector sees a different point of the scene and its signal is a linear combination of the spectral content of the light coming from each pixel, and that when the scanner completes one interferometer scan, the scene will have been scanned at all relevant linear combinations of the spectral content. <IMAGE>