A High Depth of Field Omnidirectional Video Camera With Selective High Resolution Imaging Capability

"Although the current omnidirectional camera technology possesses the advantage of having a ultra-wide (hemispherical) field of view(FOV), the image resolution for a given object in the surrounding scene is lower than that acquired by a standard videocamera. Number of pixels on a given video sensor is fixed. If the FOV is larger, the number of pixels allocated to a given size object will be inverse-proportionally smaller, resulting in a lower pixel counts for the object in the omnidirectional images.Furthermore, the depth of field (or rather lack of it) in the optical system design for the omnidirectional camera is also an issue of concern. Design methods that attempt to achieve higher depth of field have always been a compromise of the imagesharpness in both the close-up and the far-field distances.The primary objective of this SBIR program is to overcome the drawbacks of existing omnidirectional video camera techniques, and to design and demonstrate a novel omnidirectional video camera concept, dubbed as the Super-OmniEye¿, that is able to provideboth ultra-wide FOV of the dynamic scene and selective high-resolution video images for the object of interest (OOI). Furthermore, the Super-OmniEye employs a special optical design thus the high depth of field performance can be achieved. The commercial and military markets for the technology to be developed under this SBIR are obviously sizable. In military arena, the proposed Super-