EDoF Rebirth

Extended Depth of Focus (EDoF) techniques used to be a popular topic 10-15 years ago, as long as the mainstream camera phone resolution has not exceeded 2MP. However, EDoF companies were unable to scale their resolution beyond that point.

Technology University of Tampere, Finland and FLIR seem to find a good application for EDoF in MWIR cameras, where resolutions are still low up to these days. Their paper "A novel two- and multi-level binary phase mask design for enhanced depth-of-focus" by Vladimir Katkovnik, Nicholas Hogasten, and Karen Egiazarian propose a novel algorithm and its implementation for MWIR cameras:

"A midwave infrared (MWIR) system is simulated showing that this design will produce high quality images even for large amounts of defocus. It is furthermore shown that this technique can be used to design a flat, single optical element, systems where the phase mask performs both the function of focusing and phase modulation."