Abstract

Suppose that an image-gathering system has been designed to maximize the information density of the acquired data without regard to the complexity of the image-forming process that may be needed to record all of this information. Suppose, furthermore, that the image-forming process restores an image from the acquired data with the utmost care to maximize image fidelity. Then, no other image-gathering system design (i.e., relationship between sampling passband, spatial response, and SNR) than the one that maximizes the acquired information density can be expected to further improve upon the fidelity of the restored image.

© 1985 Optical Society of America