Patent ID: 8817096

Claim:
An imaging system for generating synthetic image plane data associated with an object, comprising: a first laser configured to emit a light beam to illuminate the object; first and second afocal telescopes configured to collimate and condense first and second light beam portions, respectively, reflected from the object at first and second times, respectively, when the imaging system is at first and second positions, respectively, wherein the first and second afocal telescopes are configured to move to different positions at respective times; a first beam splitter configured to combine the first light beam portion from the first afocal telescope and a third light beam portion emitted from a second laser to form a first interference pattern; a second beam splitter configured to combine the second light beam portion from the second afocal telescope and a fourth light beam portion emitted from the second laser to form a second interference pattern; a first digital camera configured to receive the first interference pattern and to generate first raw image data based on the first interference pattern; a second digital camera configured to receive the second interference pattern and to generate second raw image data based on the second interference pattern; a memory device configured to store the first and second raw image data arranged in a matrix format defined by rows and columns with the rows representing raw image data from the first and second afocal telescopes and the columns representing raw image data corresponding to the different positions of the first and second afocal telescopes at the respective times, wherein: the matrix format provides at least a portion of the first raw image data to spatially overlap at least a portion of the second raw image data, for a particular column in the matrix format, the matrix format provides at least a portion of raw image data in adjacent rows to spatially overlap with each other, and for a particular row in the matrix format, the matrix format provides at least a portion of raw image data in adjacent columns to spatially overlap with each other; and a computer configured to process the first and second raw image data from the memory device to obtain first combined complex synthetic pupil data, and the computer further configured to process the first combined complex synthetic pupil data to generate first synthetic image plane data corresponding to the object.