A review of dielectric optical metasurfaces for spatial differentiation and edge detection

Lei Wan; Danping Pan; Tianhua Feng; Weiping Liu; Alexander A Potapov

doi:10.1007/s12200-021-1124-5

A review of dielectric optical metasurfaces for spatial differentiation and edge detection

Front Optoelectron. 2021 Jun;14(2):187-200. doi: 10.1007/s12200-021-1124-5. Epub 2021 Feb 5.

Authors

Lei Wan^{1

2

3

4}, Danping Pan⁵, Tianhua Feng^{6

7}, Weiping Liu^{5

8}, Alexander A Potapov^{9

10}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Electronic Engineering, College of Information Science and Technology, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510632, China. wanlei@jnu.edu.cn.
² Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China. wanlei@jnu.edu.cn.
³ JNU-IREE RAS Joint Laboratory of Information Techniques and Fractal Signal Processing, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510632, China. wanlei@jnu.edu.cn.
⁴ Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Information and Sensing Technologies of Guangdong Higher Education Institutes, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510632, China. wanlei@jnu.edu.cn.
⁵ Department of Electronic Engineering, College of Information Science and Technology, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510632, China.
⁶ Department of Electronic Engineering, College of Information Science and Technology, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510632, China. thfeng@jnu.edu.cn.
⁷ JNU-IREE RAS Joint Laboratory of Information Techniques and Fractal Signal Processing, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510632, China. thfeng@jnu.edu.cn.
⁸ Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Information and Sensing Technologies of Guangdong Higher Education Institutes, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510632, China.
⁹ JNU-IREE RAS Joint Laboratory of Information Techniques and Fractal Signal Processing, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510632, China.
¹⁰ Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 125009, Russia.

Abstract

Dielectric metasurfaces-based planar optical spatial differentiator and edge detection have recently been proposed to play an important role in the parallel and fast image processing technology. With the development of dielectric metasurfaces of different geometries and resonance mechanisms, diverse on-chip spatial differentiators have been proposed by tailoring the dispersion characteristics of subwavelength structures. This review focuses on the basic principles and characteristic parameters of dielectric metasurfaces as first- and second-order spatial differentiators realized via the Green's function approach. The spatial bandwidth and polarization dependence are emphasized as key properties by comparing the optical transfer functions of metasurfaces for different incident wavevectors and polarizations. To present the operational capabilities of a two-dimensional spatial differentiator in image information acquisition, edge detection is described to illustrate the practicability of the device. As an application example, experimental demonstrations of edge detection for different biological cells and a flower mold are discussed, in which a spatial differentiator and objective lens or camera are integrated in three optical pathway configurations. The realization of spatial differentiators and edge detection with dielectric metasurfaces provides new opportunities for ultrafast information identification in biological imaging and machine vision.

Keywords: dielectric metasurfaces; edge detection; optical transfer function; spatial differentiator.