There’s a new lens-less camera that can see 'invisible' light to find hidden cracks or see right through glare.
March 19, 2026
Original Paper
A Lensless Polarization Camera
arXiv · 2603.17156
The Takeaway
Standard cameras are bulky because they require curved glass lenses to focus light. This paper describes a paper-thin camera that replaces the lens with a simple piece of etched glass and a smart algorithm to 'untangle' light waves, allowing it to detect polarization states that the human eye cannot perceive.
From the abstract
Polarization imaging is a technique that creates a pixel map of the polarization state in a scene. Although invisible to the human eye, polarization can assist various sensing and computer vision tasks. Existing polarization cameras use spatial or temporal multiplexing, which increases the camera volume, weight, cost, or all of the above. Recent lensless imaging approaches, such as DiffuserCam, have demonstrated that compact imaging systems can be realized by replacing the lens with a coding ele