Patent ID: 8717492

Claim:
A method for focusing a compressive imaging (CI) device, the method comprising: (a) supplying a sequence of spatial patterns to a light modulation unit of the CI device, wherein the light modulation unit includes an array of light modulating elements; (b) the light modulation unit modulating an incident light stream with the sequence of spatial patterns to produce a modulated light stream, wherein each of the spatial patterns is restricted to a subset of the array of light modulating elements; (c) a light sensing device of the CI device receiving the modulated light stream and acquiring a sequence of samples representing an intensity of the modulated light stream as a function of time, wherein the sequence of samples includes at least one sample for each of the spatial patterns; (d) constructing an image using the sequence of spatial patterns and the acquired samples; (e) computing a focus indicator value based on the image, wherein the focus indicator value indicates an extent to which the incident light stream is in focus at the light modulation unit.