Ultra-high-sensitivity color imaging via a transparent diffractive-filter array and computational optics

Conventional color imaging requires absorptive color-filter arrays, which exhibit low light transmission. Here, we replace the absorptive color-filter array with a transparent diffractive-filter array (DFA) and apply computational optics techniques to enable color imaging with a sensitivity that is enhanced by a factor as high as 3.12. The DFA diffracts incident light onto a conventional monochrome sensor array to create intensity distributions that are wavelength dependent. By first calibrating these wavelength-dependent intensity distributions and then applying computational techniques, we demonstrate single-shot hyperspectral imaging and absorption-free color imaging. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America