Methods and apparati for spectral imaging using interferometers of the low-finesse translating Fabry-Perot type

摘要

A method and an apparatus of analyzing an optical image of a scene to determine the spectral intensity of each pixel thereof, comprising: collecting incident light from the scene; passing the light through an interferometer which outputs modulated light corresponding to a predetermined set of linear combinations of the spectral intensity of the light emitted from each pixel; focusing the light outputted from the interferometer on a two dimensional detector array; and processing the output of the detector array to determine the spectral intensity of each pixel thereof; the interferometer being of the low-finesse translating Fabry-Perot type in which the optical path difference is varied to modulate the light by translating an element of the interferometer, such that at each instant each detector sees a different point of the scene and its signal is a linear combination of the spectral content of the light coming from each pixel, and that when the scanner completes one interferometer scan, the scene will have been scanned at all relevant linear combinations of the spectral content.