Compact Optical Visual Magnification System with a Wide Field of View

A new concept for designing a visual magnification system is introduced. In this concept, apart from the conventional objective and the eyepiece group lenses in the system, an additional Power-Corrector (PC) group of lenses is introduced in the optical design. The Power-Corrector group is located between the objective and the intermediate image and allows an additional degree of freedom to the optical design. This enables improving the system’s performance such as the field of view (FOV) while eliminating the system’s aberrations or reducing them to an insignificant level. Incorporating the PC group achieves this by correcting aberrations that typically limit the performance of conventional eyepiece designs, allowing a wider acceptance angle for incoming light. Recent advances in wide field of view optical systems and compact optical design methodologies have highlighted the ongoing challenges in balancing field of view expansion with aberration control. In this configuration, the PC group unifies the units, the eyepiece and the objective groups, integrates their functionality to one coherent system such that the input focal length of the system is defined jointly by the focal lengths of the objective and the PC while the aberrations are corrected jointly by the PC and the eyepiece. Thus, while the system’s magnification is the ratio of the input focal length to the eyepiece focal length, the PC enables global optimization such that the PC and the eyepiece together have a combined aberration that is less than the characteristic aberration of the eyepiece. This integrated optimization enhances the FOV. Additionally, it maintains image quality, making the system more effective than traditional designs. Contemporary research in freeform optical surface design and optimization techniques demonstrates the growing importance of advanced aberration correction methods in modern optical systems. Using this concept, a compact imaging system with a wider FOV relative to customary designs with the same magnifications, was designed and manufactured.