Optimized design of N optical filters for color and polarization imaging

Designs of N optical filters for color and polarization imaging are found by minimizing detector noise, photon shot noise, and interpolation error for the image acquisition in a division of focal plane configuration. To minimize interpolation error, a general tiling procedure and an optimized tiling pattern for N filters are presented. For multispectral imaging, a general technique to find the transmission band is presented. For full Stokes polarization imaging, the general design with optimized retardances and fast angles of the polarizers is compared with the solution of the Thomson problem. These results are applied to the design of a three-color full Stokes imaging camera.