On Monday, July 1st, the UR SPIE student chapter will be continuing its annual Summer Colloquium series with a special speaker.
Who: Ivo Ihrke
Time: 11:30 am – 12:30 pm
Abstract: Advances in imaging technology have to a large extent shaped
scientific progress in the last 200 years. While progress in imaging
technology originated in, and forced the development of, the field of
optics, the design paradigm for optical instruments has always placed
the human observer at the center of its efforts. With the advent of
electronic computation in the second half of the 20th century, optical
design could be elevated to a new level by exploiting computer-aided
design and automated optimization procedures.
However, only in recent years have computers become so powerful, and
at the same time so small and inexpensive, that imaging technology,
storage and transmission have become completely digitized. This move
has not yet reached its full potential since the human observer is
still considered the target of optimization, whereas in fact, today’s
primary observers are computers. It is this insight that enables a new
approach to optics and measurement instrumentation. Images no longer
have to mimic what the human brain is accustomed to interpret as an
image of the world, i.e. integrals over ray bundles of a restricted
subset of the electro-magnetic spectrum. Instead, sensing mechanisms
can be designed that re-distribute directional, spatial, temporal and
wavelength information to essentially agnostic sensor elements serving
as simple photon collectors.
The questions of how such redistribution can be arranged for, which
performance characteristics are to be expected of such devices, and
how these novel sensing means can be used for measurement purposes
form the basis of my research. I will discuss several example
applications and outline future developments that I think will be
neccessary for further progress.
