Special sensor masking for exceeding system geometrical resolving power

The resolution of many viewing and staring systems is often restricted by t he spatial limited resolution of its sensing device rather than by diffract ion limits related to the optical system. This spatial resolution of the se nsor, when limited by the pixels' dimensions, is coined hereby "geometrical resolution." We suggest a technique for overcoming this limit, thus obtain ing "geometrical superresolution." The proposed approach is based on captur ing a set of images, interlacing their pixels and applying special filterin g over the interlaced image. The number of the captured images N correspond s to the desired resolution improvement. Each image in the set is captured after a lateral shift of the sensor by a subpixel distance of Delta x/N, wh ere Delta x is the size of the sensor's pixel. The main contribution is in designing a special energetic efficient mask that is attached to the sensin g plane. Without this mask, unrecoverable resolution loss prevents a qualit ative reconstruction to be obtained. (C) 2000 Society of Photo-Optical Inst rumentation Engineers, [S0091-3286(00)03107-X].