The analysis of ray aberration of arbitrary phase mask in the wavefront coding system

The analyses of the imaging performance of the wavefront coding system are always based on the Fourier optics. In this paper, geometrical optics is used to analyze the imaging characteristics of arbitrary phase mask in the wavefront coding system. The characteristics of the spot diagrams created by odd and even symmetrical phase masks, including the size, upper and lower boundaries, ray structure, and the stability, are analyzed by the ray aberration theory. These characteristics are also compared with those obtained by Fourier optics, and the two sets of characteristics are proved to be consistent with each other quite well.