Wide Angle 3D Imaging without Distortions

ABSTRACT Dot array projection is widely employed in structured light systems for 3D imaging applications. However, considerable distortions, characterized by reduced dot densities and increased dot eccentricities, arise under large fields of view (FoV), which lead to degraded reconstruction resolution at the periphery of the projection. Here, we introduce a compensation strategy that maps the intrinsic spherical wavefront to the global Cartesian coordinate system to correct distortions. To characterize the performance of the proposed method, we design, and 3D print diffractive optical elements (DOEs) that project a compensated dot array spanning a 100° FoV for 3D reconstruction. The compensation results in a more uniform distribution and significantly improves the consistency of 3D imaging resolution, especially at the periphery. This approach shows strong potential for applications including surface inspection, flatness measurement, autonomous vehicle navigation, and facial recognition, where wide‐angle and high‐accuracy 3D sensing is critical.