Exploring Quasi-Global Solutions to Compound Lens Based Computational Imaging Systems

Recently, joint design approaches that simultaneously optimize optical systems and downstream algorithms through data-driven learning have demonstrated superior performance over traditional separate design approaches. However, current joint design approaches heavily rely on the manual identification of initial lenses, posing challenges and limitations, particularly for compound lens systems with multiple potential starting points. In this work, we present Quasi-Global Search Optics (QGSO) to automatically design compound lens based computational imaging systems through two parts: (i) Fused Optimization Method for Automatic Optical Design (OptiFusion), which searches for diverse initial optical systems under certain design specifications; and (ii) Efficient Physic-aware Joint Optimization (EPJO), which conducts parallel joint optimization of initial optical systems and image reconstruction networks with the consideration of physical constraints, culminating in the selection of the optimal solution in all search results. Extensive experimental results illustrate that QGSO serves as a transformative end-to-end lens design paradigm for superior global search ability, which automatically provides compound lens based computational imaging systems with higher imaging quality compared to existing paradigms.