Miniature Hyperspectral Imaging System

We propose to design and model a unique hyperspectral imaging sensor that will be capable of simultaneously imaging 121 color bands. The miniature spectral imager will operate in the visible/NIR band and capture one 168'168'121 spectral data cube during each integration time. The new sensor will have no moving parts, occupy a small physical form factor, and run on a laptop computer. The design and development of this sensor represents a unique opportunity in hyperspectral sensing and imaging. This effort will benefit the development of algorithms for exploiting hyperspectral image processing techniques for static scenes and temporally evolving spectral signatures. This spectral imager will sample the spectral data cube at rates up to 8 hyperspectral cubes per second with minimal computational requirements. The sensor concept is scalable to larger or smaller imaging formats, and the spectral resolution can be adjusted to increase the spatial sampling for specific applications. In addition, the sensor can be configured so that the spectral resolution varies independently of the sampling, allowing the sensitivity of the sensor to be optimized around phenomenologically important spectral regions.