Lens Design Considerations For A New Type Optical Scanner

Abstract

Serial scan thermal imaging systems require high speed scanning in order to generate a standard TV display of a scene. This is commonly done with a high speed rotating polygon mirror and a lower speed framing mirror. The scanner which is the subject of this paper uses a high speed rotating disc which embodies a circular array of spherical concave reflectors. Framing of the scene is done with an oscillating plane mirror, as with the polygon scanner. Use of the disc as the high speed line scan element allows a more com-pact scanner which runs at lower speed for a given data rate.