CAREER: Towards Computational Interferometric Imaging

Despite the diversity of computational light transport systems, all existing technologies are constrained to imaging at macroscopic scales, ranging from a few centimeters to several meters. This constraint places existing computational light transport techniques, and the remarkable capabilities they enable, outside of reach for several critical application areas that require imaging at microscopic scales, such as medical imaging, industrial fabrication, and material science.

This project aims to change this state of affairs, by creating a bridge between computational light transport and optical interferometric imaging, a wave-optics technology well-suited for microscopic imaging. The project will produce a suite of computational interferometry systems that make available the full spectrum of computational light transport capabilities at microscopic scales.

The project includes education and outreach programs tightly coupled to the research activities, namely: 1) the creation of interdisciplinary courses in visual computing, optics, and imaging; and 2) a series of workshops and summer courses for middle and high school students. These activities will bring long-term societal benefit, by encouraging students in secondary education and from traditionally under-represented backgrounds to take up STEM research and education as a career path.

The project will achieve its objective through three tightly coupled research thrusts: 1) The project will develop theoretical foundations that unify concepts across incoherent and coherent imaging. The discovered theories will enable the design of new interferometric imaging systems that can be programmed to selectively measure arbitrary light paths, while operating at microscopic scales. 2) The project will deploy these systems in a range of microscopic applications, including shape scanning, scattering tomography, and non-line-of-sight imaging.

These task-specific implementations will demonstrate the flexibility and improved performance of computational interferometry. 3) The project will design hybrid optical-digital systems that use computational interferometry systems as optical computers, to perform common calculations with improved speed and signal-to-noise ratio. The produced computational interferometry systems will be evaluated under real conditions in medicine (deep tissue imaging), industrial manufacturing (closed-loop fabrication), and material analysis (scattering material characterization), thus creating strong potential for transformative impact in these critical application areas.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.