Radial FPA based electro-optic imager

Abstract

A radial FPA based electro-optic imager, rather than the conventional rectilinear approach, would have basic overall system design advantages. Those system design advantages would apply to the components and the entire system implementation and include approaches to objective optical design, focal plane array FPA with fill factor, FPA layout and associated read-out integrated circuit ROIC, support electronics architecture and associated memory requirements, image processing IP algorithms, display layout and format, and eyepiece optics. A radial based approach to EO imagers would yield a device/system with attributes requiring less complicated optical components, with potentially fewer elements, for both the objective and eyepiece lenses. In addition, alternative objective optics could be more easily employed, such as holographic or wave front coded, due to reduced complexity of implementing correction algorithms as a result of referencing the system around its optical axis. The radial readout EO system would have pixel ‘one’ at the center and be ‘read out and displayed’ like the rings of a tree rather than words on a page.

What is claimed is: 
     
       1. A radial FPA based electro-optic imager, comprising:
 an objective lens assembly to focus an image of an object present in an image space; 
 a radial focal plane array capable of having an improved fill factor based on a circular or hexagonal layout; 
 a read-out integrated circuit to read-out signals from said radial focal plane array using a radial addressing scheme and generate read-out signals; 
 electronics and associated memory to process said read-out signals; 
 an alternate display capable displaying the processed images based on said radial focal plane array; and 
 eyepiece optics for viewing of said displayed images. 
 
     
     
       2. The electro-optic imager according to  claim 1 , wherein said radial FPA based electro-optic imager allows simpler configurations using fewer elements for at least one of the objective lens assembly and eyepiece optics. 
     
     
       3. The electro-optic imager according to  claim 1 , wherein said objective lens assembly can be based on any one of diffractive, holographic or coded wave front types involving simplified correction algorithms for referencing with respect to an optical axis. 
     
     
       4. The electro-optic imager according to  claim 1 , wherein read-out of pixel  1 , 1  is referenced to the center pixel of said radial FPA, and read-out of said radial FPA and display of pixels is based on a ring-and-sector addressing scheme. 
     
     
       5. The electro-optic imager according to  claim 1 , wherein said electronics and associated memory are capable of executing image processing algorithms to image process based on said read-out signals.