Dissertation
Patterned detectors: From design to science
Patterned detectors are an existing technology that can be found in almost all color cameras.
- Author
- T.A. Stockmans
- Date
- 11 September 2025
- Links
- Thesis in Leiden Repository
These patterned detectors consist of adding optical filters in a pattern on a pixel level on top of a detector. In common cameras the filters are broadband red, green and blue color filters. However, in this thesis we focus on more varied spectral filters and polarimetric filters.
We first show a design framework for a patterned detector for hyperspectral imaging. This framework makes use of automatic differentiation to train on existing hyperspectral datasets to determine the best spectral filters and the best layout of those spectral filters on the detector. Then we build on this framework by adding polarimetric filters as well, enabling the design of a spectro-polarimeter.
In the fourth chapter, we shift our focus from the theoretical design to an already existing commercial patterned detector for color and gray-scale polarimetric imaging. This chapter describes a calibration campaign that we conducted for these patterned detector cameras.
In the final chapter we used one of the commercial, patterned detectors that we calibrated in the previous chapter and integrated it into a new instrument that measures the linear polarization properties of the northern lights.