Increasing aperture and depth of field simultaneously with wavefront coding technology

We present a method that simultaneously increases the aperture and depth of field (DOF). A novel, to the best of our knowledge, method called lens-combined wavefront coding (WFC) is proposed for optical design. By rationally balancing rather than minimizing the aberrations, the DOF enhances instead of reduces with expansion of the aperture size. Two optical systems by traditional design and lens-combined WFC are designed to demonstrate our concept. Experiments are conducted using the manufactured lenses to show the extension of the DOF both in the laboratory and the real scene. A spatially invariant deconvolution algorithm is exploited to further suppress the aberrations regarding the field of view. The results show that the aperture and the DOF can be successfully enhanced at the same time.