Shifting colored coded aperture design for spectral imaging

Compressive spectral imaging (CSI) systems sense 3D spatio-spectral data cubes with just a few two-dimensional (2D) projections by using a coded aperture, a dispersive element, and a focal plane array (FPA). The coded apertures in these systems, whose main function is the modulation of the data cube, are often implemented through photomasks attached to piezoelectric devices. A remarkable improvement on this configuration has been recently proposed, the replacement of the block-unblock coded apertures by patterned optical filter arrays, referred to as "colored" coded apertures, which allow spatial and spectral modulation. When using these colored coded apertures, its real implementation in terms of cost and complexity directly depends on the number of filters to be used, as well as the number of shots to be captured. A shifting colored coded aperture optimization featuring these observations is proposed, with the aim to improve the imaging quality reconstruction and to generate an achievable optical implementation with a limited number of filters requiring only one mask to acquire any number of shots. The mathematical model of the computational imaging strategy to overcome the practical limitations of actual CSI systems is presented along with a testbed implementation. Simulations, as well as experimental results, will prove the accuracy and performance of the proposed shifting colored coded aperture design over the current literature designs.