Aberration Invariant Imaging - Field Curvature

Images from a traditional imaging system with no aberrations (left), a traditional imaging system with field curvature (middle), and optical/digital system with field curvature (right).

We used MATLAB to simulate imaging with a conventional imaging system and with an aberration-invariant optical/digital system, both with field curvature. At the left is a the image of a grid pattern produced by a diffraction-limited conventional imaging system. In the middle is the image of the same pattern produced by a conventional system with 2.5 waves of field curvature. At the right, we have the image generated by an aberration-invariant optical/digital system, also with 2.5 waves of field curvature.

These pictures show that the optical/digital system delivers near-diffraction-limited performance even in the presence of significant amounts of field curvature.