A fundus camera a complex optical system that makes use of the principle of reflex free indirect ophthalmoscopy to image the retina. Despite being in existence as early as 1900's, little has changed in the design of a fundus camera and there is minimal information about the design principles utilized. Parameters and specifications involved in the design of fundus camera are determined and their affect on system performance are discussed. Fundus cameras incorporating different design methods are modeled and a performance evaluation based on design parameters is used to determine the effectiveness of each design strategy. By determining the design principles involved in the fundus camera, new cameras can be designed to include specific imaging modalities such as optical coherence tomography, imaging spectroscopy and imaging polarimetry to gather additional information about properties and structure of the retina. Design principles utilized to incorporate such modalities into fundus camera systems are discussed. Design, implementation and testing of a snapshot polarimeter fundus camera are demonstrated.

Laparoscopic surgery or minimally invasive surgery has great advantages compared with the conventional open surgery, such as reduced pain, shorter recovery time and lower infection rate. It has become a standard clinical procedure for cholecystectomy, appendectomy and splenectomy. The state-of-the-art laparoscopic technologies suffer from several significant limitations, one of which is the tradeoff of the limited instantaneous field of view (FOV) for high spatial resolution versus the wide FOV for situational awareness but with diminished spatial resolution. Standard laparoscopes lack the ability to acquire both wide-angle and high-resolution images simultaneously through a single scope. During the surgery, a trained assistant is required to manipulate the laparoscope. The practice of frequently maneuvering the laparoscope by a trained assistant can lead to poor or awkward ergonomic scenarios. This type of ergonomic conflicts imposes inherent challenges to laparoscopic procedures, and it is further aggravated with the introduction of single port access (SPA) techniques to laparoscopic surgery. SPA uses one combined surgical port for all instruments instead of using multiple ports in the abdominal wall. The grouping of ports raises a number of challenges, including the tunnel vision due to the in-line arrangement of instruments, poor triangulation of instruments, and the instrument collision due to the close proximity to other surgical devices. A multi-resolution foveated laparoscope (MRFL) was proposed to address those limitations of the current laparoscopic surgery. The MRFL is able to simultaneously capture a wide-angle view for situational awareness and a high-resolution zoomed-in view for fine details. The high-resolution view can be scanned and registered anywhere within the wide-angle view, enabled by a 2D optical scanning mechanism. In addition, the high-resolution probe has optical zoom and autofocus capabilities, so that the field coverage can be dynamically varied while keep the same focus distance as the wide-angle probe. Moreover, the MRFL has a large working distance compared with the standard laparoscopes, the wide-angle probe has more than 8x field coverage than a standard laparoscope. On the other hand, the high-resolution probe has 3x spatial resolution than a standard one. These versatile capabilities are anticipated to have significant impacts on the diagnostic, clinical and technical aspects of minimally invasive surgery. In this dissertation, the development of the multi-resolution foveated laparoscope was discussed in detail. Starting from the refinement of the 1st order specifications, system configurations, and initial prototype demonstration, a customized dual-view MRFL system with fixed optical magnifications was developed and demonstrated. After the in-vivo test of the first generation prototype of the MRFL, further improvement was made on the high-resolution probe by adding an optical zoom and auto-focusing capability. The optical design, implementation and experimental validation of the MRFL prototypes were presented and discussed in detail.

Compact and lightweight optical designs achieving acceptable image quality, field of view, eye clearance, eyebox size, operating across the visible spectrum, are the key to the success of next generation head-worn displays. The first part of this thesis reports on the design, fabrication, and analysis of off-axis magnifier designs. The first design is catadioptric and consists of two elements. The lens utilizes a diffractive optical element and the mirror has a free-form surface described with an x-y polynomial. A comparison of color correction between doublets and single layer diffractive optical elements in an eyepiece as a function of eye clearance is provided to justify the use of a diffractive optical element. The dual-element design has an 8 mm diameter eyebox, 15 mm eye clearance, 20 degree diagonal full field, and is designed to operate across the visible spectrum between 450-650 nm. 20% MTF at the Nyquist frequency with less than 3% distortion has been achieved in the dual-element head-worn display. An ideal solution for a head-worn display would be a single free-form surface mirror design. A single surface mirror does not have dispersion; therefore, color correction is not required. A single surface mirror can be made see-through by machining the appropriate surface shape on the opposite side to form a zero power shell. The second design consists of a single off-axis free-form mirror described with an x-y polynomial, which achieves a 3 mm diameter exit pupil, 15 mm eye relief, and a 24 degree diagonal full field of view. The second design achieves 10% MTF at the Nyquist frequency set by the pixel spacing of the VGA microdisplay with less than 3% distortion. Both designs have been fabricated using diamond turning techniques. Finally, this thesis addresses the question of what is the optimal surface shape for a single mirror constrained in an off-axis magnifier configuration with multiple fields? Typical optical surfaces implemented in raytrace codes today are functions mapping two dimensional vectors to real numbers. The majority of optical designs to-date have relied on conic sections and polynomials as the functions of choice. The choice of conic sections is justified since conic sections are stigmatic surfaces under certain imaging geometries. The choice of polynomials from the point of view of surface description can be challenged. A polynomial surface description may link a designer s understanding of the wavefront aberrations and the surface description. The limitations of using multivariate polynomials are described by a theorem due to Mairhuber and Curtis from approximation theory. This thesis proposes and applies radial basis functions to represent free-form optical surfaces as an alternative to multivariate polynomials. We compare the polynomial descriptions to radial basis functions using the MTF criteria. The benefits of using radial basis functions for surface description are summarized in the context of specific head-worn displays. The benefits include, for example, the performance increase measured by the MTF, or the ability to increase the field of view or pupil size. Even though Zernike polynomials are a complete and orthogonal set of basis over the unit circle and they can be orthogonalized for rectangular or hexagonal pupils using Gram-Schmidt, taking practical considerations into account, such as optimization time and the maximum number of variables available in current raytrace codes, for the specific case of the single off-axis magnifier with a 3 mm pupil, 15 mm eye relief, 24 degree diagonal full field of view, we found the Gaussian radial basis functions to yield a 20% gain in the average MTF at 17 field points compared to a Zernike (using 66 terms) and an x-y polynomial up to and including 10th order. The linear combination of radial basis function representation is not limited to circular apertures. Visualization tools such as field map plots provided by nodal aberration theory have been applied during the analysis of the off-axis systems discussed in this thesis. Full-field displays are used to establish node locations within the field of view for the dual-element head-worn display. The judicious separation of the nodes along the x-direction in the field of view results in well-behaved MTF plots. This is in contrast to an expectation of achieving better performance through restoring symmetry via collapsing the nodes to yield field-quadratic astigmatism.

<p>This dissertation describes three computational sensors. The first sensor is a scanning multi-spectral aperture-coded microscope containing a coded aperture spectrometer that is vertically scanned through a microscope intermediate image plane. The spectrometer aperture-code spatially encodes the object spectral data and nonnegative</p> <p>least squares inversion combined with a series of reconfigured two-dimensional (2D spatial-spectral) scanned measurements enables three-dimensional (3D) (x, y, &#955) object estimation. The second sensor is a coded aperture snapshot spectral imager that employs a compressive optical architecture to record a spectrally filtered projection</p> <p>of a 3D object data cube onto a 2D detector array. Two nonlinear and adapted TV-minimization schemes are presented for 3D (x,y,&#955) object estimation from a 2D compressed snapshot. Both sensors are interfaced to laboratory-grade microscopes and</p> <p>applied to fluorescence microscopy. The third sensor is a millimeter-wave holographic imaging system that is used to study the impact of 2D compressive measurement on 3D (x,y,z) data estimation. Holography is a natural compressive encoder since a 3D</p> <p>parabolic slice of the object band volume is recorded onto a 2D planar surface. An adapted nonlinear TV-minimization algorithm is used for 3D tomographic estimation from a 2D and a sparse 2D hologram composite. This strategy aims to reduce scan time costs associated with millimeter-wave image acquisition using a single pixel receiver.</p> / Dissertation

A new type of photolithography, Pattern-Integrated Interference Lithography (PIIL), was demonstrated. PIIL is the first-ever integration of pattern imaging with interference lithography in a single-exposure step. The result is an optical-intensity distribution composed of a subwavelength periodic lattice with integrated functional circuit elements. To demonstrate the PIIL method, a Pattern-Integrated Interference Exposure System (PIIES) was developed that incorporates a projection imaging capability in a novel three-beam interference configuration. The purpose of this system was to fabricate, in a single-exposure step, representative photonic-crystal structures. Initial experimental results have confirmed the PIIL concept, demonstrating the potential application of PIIL in nano-electronics, photonic crystals, biomedical structures, optical trapping, metamaterials, and in numerous subwavelength structures. In the design of the PIIES configuration, accurate motif geometry models were developed for the 2D plane-group symmetries possible via linearly-polarized three-beam interference, optimized for maximum absolute contrast and primitive-lattice-vector direction equal contrast. Next, a straightforward methodology was presented to facilitate a thorough analysis of effects of parametric constraints on interference-pattern symmetries, motif geometries, and their absolute contrasts. With this information, the design of the basic PIIES configuration was presented along with a model that simulates the resulting optical-intensity distribution at the system sample plane. Appropriate performance metrics were defined in order to quantify the characteristics of the resulting photonic-crystal structure.

Spatial Light Modulators (SLMs) based on Micro-Opto-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MOEMS) are increasingly being used in various fields of optics and enable novel functionalities. The technology features frame rates from a few kHz to the MHz range as well as resolutions in the megapixel range. The field continues to make rapid progress, but technological advancements are always associated with high expenditure. Against this background, this dissertation addresses the question: What contribution can optical system design make to the further development of MOEMS-SLM-based modulation? A lens is a simple example of an optical system. This dissertation deals with system design based on Fourier optics in which the wave properties of light are exploited. On this basis, arrays of micromirrors can modulate light properties in a spatially resolved manner. For example, tilt-mirrors can control the intensity distribution in an image plane. In this dissertation variations of the aperture required for this are investigated. In addition to known absorbing apertures, phase filters in particular are investigated, which apply a spatially distributed delay effect to the light wave. This dissertation proposes the combination of MOEMS-SLMs with static, pixelated elements in the same system. These may be pixelated phase masks, also known as diffractive optical elements (DOEs). Analogously, pixelated polarizer arrays and absorbing photomasks exist. The combination of SLMs and static elements allows new degrees of freedom in system design. This thesis proposes new modulation systems based on MOEMS tilt-mirror SLMs. These systems use analog tilt-mirror arrays for the simultaneous modulation of intensity and phase as well as intensity and polarization. The proposed systems thus open up new possibilities for MOEMS-based spatial light modulation. Their properties are validated and investigated by numerical simulations. System properties and limitations are derived from these near and far field simulations. This dissertation shows that the modulation of different MOEMS-SLM types can be fundamentally changed by system design. Piston mirror arrays are classically used for phase modulation and tilt-mirror arrays for intensity modulation. This thesis proposes the use of subpixel phase structures. Their use approximately provides tilt-mirrors with the phase-modulating effect of piston-mirrors. In order to achieve this, a new optimization method is presented. Piston-mirror arrays are available only to a limited extent. By contrast, tilt-mirror arrays are well established. In combination with subpixel phase features, tilt-mirrors may replace piston-mirrors in some applications. These and other challenges of MOEMS-SLM technology can be adequately addressed on the basis of system design. / Räumliche Lichtmodulatoren (Spatial Light Modulators, SLMs) auf Basis von Mikro-Opto-Elektro-Mechanischen Systemen (MOEMS) finden zunehmend Anwendung in verschiedensten Teilgebieten der Optik und ermöglichen neuartige Funktionalitäten. Die Technik ermöglicht Frameraten von einigen kHz bis in den MHz-Bereich sowie Auflösungen bis in den Megapixelbereich. Der Fachbereich macht nach wie vor rasche Fortschritte, technologische Weiterentwicklungen sind aber stets mit hohem Aufwand verbunden. Vor diesem Hintergrund widmet sich diese Arbeit der Frage: Welchen Beitrag kann optisches Systemdesign zur Weiterentwicklung der MOEMS-SLM-basierten Modulation leisten? Bereits eine Linse stellt ein Beispiel für ein optisches System dar. Diese Dissertation beschäftigt sich mit Systemdesign auf Basis der Fourier-Optik, bei der die Welleneigenschaften des Lichts genutzt werden. Auf dieser Basis können Arrays von Mikrospiegeln die flächige Verteilung von Licht einstellen. Beispielsweise können Kippspiegel die Intensitätsverteilung in einer Bildebene steuern. In dieser Dissertation werden Variationen der dafür nötigen Apertur untersucht. Neben bekannten absorbierenden Blenden werden insbesondere Phasenfilter untersucht, welche eine flächig verteilte Verzögerungswirkung auf die Lichtwelle aufbringen. Diese Dissertation schlägt die Kombination von MOEMS-SLMs mit statischen, pixelierten Elementen im selben System vor. Hierbei kann es sich um pixelierte Phasenmasken handeln, auch bekannt als diffraktive optische Elemente (DOEs). Analog existieren pixelierte Polarisatorarrays und absorbierende Fotomasken. Die Kombination von SLMs und statischen Elementen ermöglicht neue Freiheiten im Systemdesign. Diese Arbeit schlägt neue Modulationssysteme auf Basis von MOEMS-Kippspiegel-SLMs vor. Diese Systeme nutzen analoge Kippspiegelarrays für die simultane Modulation von Intensität und Phase sowie von Intensität und Polarisation. Die vorgeschlagenen Systeme eröffnen damit neue Möglichkeiten für die MOEMS-basierte Flächenlichtmodulation. Ihre Eigenschaften werden mithilfe von numerischen Simulationen validiert und untersucht. Aus diesen Nah- und Fernfeldsimulationen werden Systemeigenschaften und Limitierungen abgeleitet. Es wird in dieser Arbeit gezeigt, dass die Modulation verschiedener MOEMS-SLM-Typen auf Basis des Systementwurfs fundamental verändert werden kann. Senkspiegelarrays werden klassischerweise zur Modulation der Phase eingesetzt und Kippspiegelarrays zur Modulation der Intensität. Diese Arbeit schlägt die Nutzung von Subpixel-Phasenstrukturen vor. Diese verleihen Kippspiegeln näherungsweise die phasenmodulierende Wirkung von Senkspiegeln. Um dies zu erreichen, wird ein neuartiges Optimierungsverfahren vorgestellt. Senkspiegelarrays sind nur in geringem Umfang verfügbar. Im Gegensatz dazu sind Kippspiegelarrays gut etabliert. In Kombination mit Subpixel-Phasenstrukturen könnten Kippspiegel in einigen Anwendungen Senkspiegel ersetzen. Diese und andere Herausforderungen der MOEMS-SLM-Technologie lassen sich auf der Grundlage des Systemdesigns adäquat adressieren.