Single-shot Multispectral Imaging via a Chromatic Metalens Array

Abstract

Real-time, single-shot multispectral imaging systems are crucial for environmental monitoring and biomedical imaging. Most single-shot multispectral imagers rely on complex computational backends, which preclude real-time operations. In this work, we leverage the spectral selectivity afforded by engineered photonic materials to perform bulk of the multispectral data extraction in the optical domain, thereby circumventing the need for heavy backend computation. We use our imager to extract multispectral data for two real-world objects at 8 predefined spectral channels in the 400–900 nm wavelength range. For both objects, an RGB image constructed using extracted multispectral data shows good agreement with an image taken with a phone camera, thereby validating our imaging approach. We believe that the proposed system can provide new avenues for the development of highly compact and low-latency multispectral imaging technologies.