Noise attenuation performance of mura apertures in photographic cameras

Coded apertures provide enhanced noise characteristics to lens-less imaging systems. Similar characteristics have been suggested for traditional cameras. Four experiments were conducted to investigate the amount of noise reduction provided by coded apertures when used in photographic cameras. They focus on the effects of coding mask sizes, positioning, mosaicing and rotation. The signal to noise ratio of photos taken with and without coding masks was evaluated. The mask pattern utilized was the modified uniformly redundant array (MURA). The experiments showed evidence of noise reduction and best results were obtained for masks with higher element count, mosaiced and limited to the sensor size.