Texas Instruments Corporation

Raytheon Company

Samuel R McKenney

Robert C Gibbons

S Charles Baber

Michael C Bell

Richard R Chang

Erwin E Cooper

Patrick A Trotta

A method uses an infrared imaging system to produce an image of a scene. Actual infrared radiation from the scene is detected to form a biased signal representing the radiances of objects wiithin the scene, and the biased signal is diffracted by causing rays of the radiation to pass through an array of lenslets at angles devitated from their normal path. The array includes an infrared transmissive deformable film which retains a pattern stamped into it, the pattern including a plurality of the diffracting lenslets. The diffracted and defocused radiation is detected to form a reference signal, the reference signal is subtracted from the biased signal to obtain an unbiased signal, and an image is generated and displayed in reponse to the unbiased signal.

Infrared chopper using binary diffractive optics

A chopper, in an infrared imaging system, is used to scatter infrared radiation from a viewed scene. This scattered radiation is detected with an infrared detector and used to produce a reference signal, which represents the uniform average radiance of the scene. This reference signal may be substracted from a signal representing the unscattered radiation emitted by the scene, to produce a signal that represents only radiance differences and that is an optimal signal for amplification.

Reflective chopper for infrared imaging systems

An optical flexure joint comprises first and second gimbal mounted lens doublets. The first doublet has a positive surface and the second a negative surface. Each lens doublet consists of two common glasses having index of refractions between about 1.4 and 1.9 that produce the same power as if they were a single lens having an index of refraction of 2.0. The first and second doublets when mounted with the positive and negative surfaces mating and the first doublet rotated with respect to the second form a wedge which has an optical deviation equal to the wedge angle; thus the optical flexure joint allows a small rotary motion to occur in an optical system perpendicular to the optical axis without any perceptable image motion.

Optical flexure joint

Growing community of inventors

Dallas, TX, United States of America

Samuel R McKenney