New image sensor breaks optical limits without using lenses resolves sub-micron features at ultralong working distances and reconstructs 3D shapes over centimeter-scale fields

Amazing stuff! This could be a major breakthrough!

"... introducing a breakthrough solution that could redefine optical imaging across science, medicine, and industry.

"At the heart of this breakthrough is a longstanding technical problem," said Zheng. "Synthetic aperture imaging—the method that allowed the Event Horizon Telescope to image a black hole—works by coherently combining measurements from multiple separated sensors to simulate a much larger imaging aperture." ..."

"... Yet despite decades of innovation, a fundamental barrier has persisted: capturing high-resolution, wide-field images at optical wavelengths without cumbersome lenses or strict alignment constraints. ...

The Multiscale Aperture Synthesis Imager (MASI) turns this challenge on its head. Rather than forcing multiple optical sensors to operate in perfect physical synchrony – a task that would require nanometer-level precision – MASI lets each sensor measure light independently and then uses computational algorithms to synchronize the data afterward. ...

akin to having multiple photographers capture the same scene, not as ordinary photos but as raw measurements of light wave properties, and then letting software stitch these independent captures into one ultra-high-resolution image. ...

MASI deviates from conventional optical imaging in two transformative ways. Rather than relying on lenses to focus light onto a sensor, MASI deploys an array of coded sensors positioned in different parts of a diffraction plane. Each captures raw diffraction patterns –essentially the way light waves spread after interacting with an object. These diffraction measurements contain both amplitude and phase information, which are recovered using computational algorithms.

Once each sensor’s complex wavefield is recovered, the system digitally pads and numerically propagates the wavefields back to the object plane. A computational phase synchronization method then iteratively adjusts the relative phase offsets of each sensor’s data to maximize the overall coherence and energy in the unified reconstruction.

This step is the key innovation: by optimizing the combined wavefields in software rather than aligning sensors physically, MASI overcomes the diffraction limit and other constraints imposed by traditional optics.

The result? A virtual synthetic aperture for larger than any single sensor, enabling sub-micron resolution and wide field coverage without lenses. ..."

From the abstract:

"Synthetic aperture imaging has enabled breakthrough observations from radar to astronomy. However, optical implementation remains challenging due to stringent wavefield synchronization requirements among multiple receivers.

Here we present the multiscale aperture synthesis imager (MASI), which utilizes parallelism to break complex optical challenges into tractable sub-problems. MASI employs a distributed array of coded sensors that operate independently yet coherently to surpass the diffraction limit of single receiver. It combines the propagated wavefields from individual sensors through a computational phase synchronization scheme, eliminating the need for overlapping measurement regions to establish phase coherence.
Light diffraction in MASI naturally expands the imaging field, generating phase-contrast visualizations that are substantially larger than sensor dimensions.

Without using lenses, MASI resolves sub-micron features at ultralong working distances and reconstructs 3D shapes over centimeter-scale fields.

MASI transforms the intractable optical synchronization problem into a computational one, enabling practical deployment of scalable synthetic aperture systems at optical wavelengths."

New image sensor breaks optical limits

New Image Sensor Breaks Optical Limits (original news release) "UConn engineers develop new image sensor to achieve 3D microscopic resolution without lenses."

Multiscale aperture synthesis imager (open access)

A bullet cartridge imaged by MASI.
Top: The captured complex electric field contains both amplitude (brightness) and phase (color) information.
Bottom: This data enables 3D reconstruction at micrometer resolution, showing the firing pin impression, a unique marking that can link a bullet casing to a specific gun

Fig. 1: Operating principle and implementation of MASI.