| EXTENDED SOURCE ANALYSIS |
|
| Point sources are very useful in the design of imaging systems, because the detected image properties of a point source can be used to accurately describe many aspects of image quality. |
However, extended sources are very useful for visualizing distortion (especially non-radial distortion), checking image orientation or polarity, color separation, and for qualitatively illustrating overall system performance. |
ZEMAX supports two types of extended sources. A simple ASCII format that is useful for making bar targets, letters, squares, and other simple shapes is supported. For color images ZEMAX supports the standard Windows BMP and JPG formats. Images defined in either format may be used as sources, and the detected image may be viewed for any optical system using user defined detector properties. |
Once an extended source file is created, it can be scaled, rotated, inverted, and placed at any position in the field. The detected image may be saved as another bitmap for analysis. The extended source imaging features in ZEMAX account for image distortion, aberrations, and transmission, which is generally field, pupil, and wavelength dependent. |
|
|
|
