University of Utah electrical and computer engineers have discovered a way to create an optics-less camera in which a regular pane of glass or any see-through window can become the lens. Their innovation was published in a research paper, "Computational Imaging Enables a 'See-Through' Lensless Camera," newest issue of Optics Express.

"Why don't we think from the ground up to design cameras that are optimized for machines and not humans. That's my philosophical point," he says.

If a normal digital camera sensor such as one for a mobile phone or an SLR camera is pointed at an object without a lens, it results in an image that looks like a pixelated blob. But within that blob is still enough digital information to detect the object if a computer program is properly trained to identify it. You simply create an algorithm to decode the image.

Through a series of experiments, Menon and his team of researchers took a picture of the University of Utah's "U" logo as well as video of an animated stick figure, both displayed on an LED light board. An inexpensive, off-the-shelf camera sensor was connected to the side of a plexiglass window, but pointed into the window while the light board was positioned in front of the pane at a 90-degree angle from the front of the sensor. The resulting image from the camera sensor, with help from a computer processor running the algorithm, is a low-resolution picture but definitely recognizable. The method also can produce full-motion video as well as color images, Menon says.

The process involves wrapping reflective tape around the edge of the window. Most of the light coming from the object in the picture passes through the glass, but just enough -- about 1 percent -- scatters through the window and into the camera sensor for the computer algorithm to decode the image.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180821094155.htm