Coded aperture system performance comparison with conventional optics based approaches

Coded Aperture Imaging (CAI) is a new approach to system design whereby the optics are simplified in a controlled way so that system performance can be recovered using appropriate computer based algorithms. Adopting Coded Aperture approaches to sensor designs opens up possibilities of increasing the system design trade-space thereby giving the system designer greater degrees of freedom to optimise the system. A comparison has been made between a system adopting CA in its optical train with systems based on conventional optics approaches. These comparisons show that CA based systems can provide significant benefits to the user in some applications.