Toward all-in-focus lensless imaging with full-aperture radial masks

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Authors: Jose Reinaldo Cunha Santos A V Silva Neto, Hodaka Kawachi, Yasushi Yagi, Tomoya Nakamura
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Abstract

We propose a lensless imaging system based on a full-aperture radial coded mask that produces a nearly depth-invariant point spread function (PSF), paving the way towards all-in-focus image reconstruction from a single PSF calibration. In contrast to conventional lens-based systems—where defocus blur is directly observed—lensless cameras rely on computational reconstruction using a calibrated PSF, making image quality highly sensitive to PSF mismatch. Our radial mask design ensures more consistent PSF structure across a wide depth range, mitigating this sensitivity and enabling captures that are less sensitive to depth variation. We validate the depth invariance of the proposed mask through experimental PSF analysis, demonstrating high correlation between PSFs captured at depths from 1~cm to 10~cm. We further evaluate the system through simulations and prototype experiments, showing improved robustness to depth mismatch when compared to conventional restricted-aperture masks. Finally, we introduce a novel shift-invariant reconstruction approach using an artificially extended PSF, enabled by the scale-invariant geometry of the radial pattern. This approximation allows for efficient and high-quality deconvolution across continuous depth ranges, demonstrating the practical feasibility of full-aperture lensless imaging.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Image Processing Techniques and Applications Advanced optical system design Random lasers and scattering media

Publication details

Publication date
20 January 2026
Document type
Preprint