LIQUID-CRYSTAL ACTIVE LENS - A RECONFIGURABLE LENS EMPLOYING A PHASE MODULATOR

The proposed active lens consists of a lens attached to a liquid-cryst al two-dimensional phase modulator and it provides both a variable foc al length and image processing capability. Since the lens has main ref ractive power and the phase modulator provides a small and variable po wer, the device features a large and variable power and a small F numb er. It can also perform convolution-based image processing in an incoh erent imaging system, since its intensity point-spread function can be controlled by changing the modulator's phase distribution, A prototyp e device varied its focal length from 0.23 m to 0.28 m and image-shift ing, image-splitting and matched-filtering operations were experimenta lly demonstrated.