Patent ID: 7433127

Claim:
An imaging device for picking up an image of at least one object, comprising: a lens component group including a plurality of lens component systems, each of which focuses incident light from the object, thereby creating a non-inverted image of the object, the lens component systems being arranged in an array form and in one plane perpendicular to their optical axes; and an image capturing mechanism for picking up the image created by the lens component systems; each of the lens component systems including an afocal optical system for allowing the light from the object to pass through, and an image-forming system for focusing the light from the afocal optical system; the afocal optical system including at least one optical element for inverting an externally incident light ray with respect to its optical axis and outputting the inverted light ray, the optical element having uniform refractive index throughout its interior; the image-forming system including at least one optical element having uniform refractive index throughout its interior.