The recent application of monocentric lenses for panoramic high-resolution digital imagers raises the question of the achievable performance limits of this lens structure and of techniques for design optimization to approach these limits. This paper defines the important regions of the design space of moderate complexity monocentric lenses and describes systematic and global optimization algorithms for the design of monocentric objective lenses of various focal lengths, apertures, and spectral bandwidths. We demonstrate the trade-off between spectral band, F-number and lens complexity, and provide design examples of monocentric lenses for specific applications.
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