Measurement of the Optical Transfer Function Using Single Pixel Imaging

An optical transfer function is a function that describes how well a system can capture different spatial frequencies and it is possible to calculate the optical transfer function of any system with just four images. We started by projecting 4 sinusoidal illumination patterns with phase shifts of π/2 onto the object plane of the camera lens and by choosing a single pixel on all 4 images we then calculated the optical transfer function. Then we calculated the inverse Fourier Transform of the optical transfer function to determine the point spread function of the camera lens. Furthermore, by testing multiple different points on a set of images it is possible to prove that the choice of pixel while imaging is arbitrary and all pixels in the image work equally as well. Lastly, by performing the process over a large range of the sinusoidal frequencies the performance at higher frequencies can be determined because as spatial frequency increases high detail imaging becomes more difficult.