The fabrication of a multi-spectral lens array and its application in assisting color blindness

This paper presents a novel compact multi-spectral lens array and describes its application in assisting color blinds. The lens array consists of 9 microlens, and each lens is coated with a different color filter. Thus, it can capture different light bands, including red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, violet, near-infrared and the entire visible band. First, the fabrication process is described in details. Second, an imaging system is setup and several color blind testing cards were selected as the samples. It is shown that the multi-spectral images capture the patterns in different spectra, based on which we can help the people with color blind to recover normal vision. This new technology can also be used for many other applications, such as study the vision of animals, capture the hidden color patterns in nature and man-made systems and etc.