Color-selective optical edge detection enabled by thermally stimulated cholesteric liquid crystals

Optical edge detection can significantly compress the data volume and is highly pursued in imaging processing. The commonly used methods extract the optical edge information but lose the capability to distinguish colors, which is another key information for imaging. Here, a design for color-selective optical edge detection is proposed and demonstrated with a cholesteric liquid crystal q-plate. The corresponding optical edge detection exhibits a narrow reflection band characteristic due to the one-dimensional photonic crystal configuration of the cholesteric liquid crystal. The monochromatic band is thermally and reversibly tuned ∼300 nm within 5.3 °C. Color-selective optical edge detection is verified by a series of chromatic images. This work introduces a thermally responsive liquid crystal device to release the color dimension of optical edge detection, which may upgrade existing imaging processing techniques.