Lensless imaging with active metasurfaces in detector-limited applications

We propose an imaging platform consisting of an active metasurface coupled to a single-pixel or few-pixel detector and present a theoretical analysis on its resolution, point spread function, and signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR). We show with a computational model which assumes the characteristics of an experimentally realized local metasurface that a 0.2 mm x 0.2 mm aperture can recover ~60,000 image points at a wavelength of 1510 nm with a linear resolution exceeding 1.2 pixel/° across 120° FOV. We study the compatibility of our platform with different sensing bases and edge-detection operations and analyze how the losses and platform modulation rates set the total system acquisition time. Finally, we discuss the impact of active metasurface technological limitations on imaging metrics and propose as a next step to investigate the recovery of phase information in coherent scenes.