Patent ID: 6996292

Claim:
A staring imaging method comprising: applying a two-dimensional spatial image containing multi-frequency spectral information to a two-dimensional optical encoder; encoding a x-dimension of spatial information from the two-dimensional spatial image with a cyclic Hadamard S-matrix applied by the two-dimensional optical encoder to form a Hadamard spatially encoded image; spectrally dispersing in the x-dimension the Hadamard spatially encoded image to form a spatially encoded, spectrally dispersed image; focussing the spacially encoded, spectrally dispersed image onto a two-dimensional detector to form a detected image; stepping the two-dimensional optical encoder through a plurality of positions and building an untransformed, spatially encoded, and spectrally dispersed data cube from the detected image collected using each position of the two-dimensional optical encoder; applying a moving window Hadamard transform to the untransformed, spatially encoded, and spectrally dispersed data cube to deconvolve an encoded spatial dimension; and forming a hyperspectral data cube containing two spatial and one spectral dimension as a transform of the two-dimensional spatial image.