Back to Design of High-Performance Optical Systems
University of Colorado Boulder

Design of High-Performance Optical Systems

This course can also be taken for academic credit as ECEA 5602, part of CU Boulder’s Master of Science in Electrical Engineering degree. Optical instruments are how we see the world, from corrective eyewear to medical endoscopes to cell phone cameras to orbiting telescopes. This course extends what you have learned about first-order, paraxial system design and optical resolution and efficiency with the introduction to real lenses and their imperfections. We begin with a description of how different wavelengths propagate through systems, then move on to aberrations that appear with high angle, non-paraxial systems and how to correct for those problems. The course wraps up with a discussion of optical components beyond lenses and an excellent example of a high-performance optical system – the human eye. The mathematical tools required for analysis of high-performance systems are complicated enough that this course will rely more heavily on OpticStudio by Zemax. This will allow students to analyze systems that are too complicated for the simple analysis thus far introduced in this set of courses.

Status: Image Quality
Status: Technical Design
AdvancedCourse23 hours

Featured reviews

OC

5.0Reviewed Jun 7, 2022

Practical and highly informative engineering course.

DM

5.0Reviewed Nov 13, 2022

Very useful extension to the material presented in the first course of the specialisation, including much material that was new to me that would be useful in designing real world optical systems.

OR

5.0Reviewed Jul 20, 2020

Great course.Best online course on optics designing. Hope Coursera will launch more courses like this in future

LC

5.0Reviewed Aug 20, 2021

A very good overview with all the necessary information. Good starter into the principles and ends with practical tips for the field.

All reviews

Showing: 11 of 11

Wayne Lin
4.0
Reviewed May 30, 2020
Oberon Dixon-Luinenburg
5.0
Reviewed Nov 14, 2018
Önder Sönmez
5.0
Reviewed Oct 4, 2020
Lim Chin Chean
5.0
Reviewed Aug 20, 2021
Dan Marwick
5.0
Reviewed Nov 14, 2022
O R
5.0
Reviewed Jul 21, 2020
Ori Cohen
5.0
Reviewed Jun 8, 2022
Chandan Maurya
5.0
Reviewed Aug 22, 2020
Arda Eren
5.0
Reviewed Feb 16, 2022
Jyotismita Sahoo
5.0
Reviewed Jun 7, 2021
I.D
2.0
Reviewed Aug 15, 2023