1D fast coded aperture camera.

A fast (100 MHz) 1D coded aperture visible light camera has been developed as a prototype for imaging plasma experiments in the EUV/X-ray bands. The system uses printed patterns on transparency sheets as the masked aperture and an 80 channel photodiode array (9 V reverse bias) as the detector. In the low signal limit, the system has demonstrated 40-fold increase in throughput and a signal-to-noise gain of ≈7 over that of a pinhole camera of equivalent parameters. In its present iteration, the camera can only image visible light; however, the only modifications needed to make the system EUV/X-ray sensitive are to acquire appropriate EUV/X-ray photodiodes and to machine a metal masked aperture.