Lensless endoscope and other imaging devices

An imaging device that uses light to image a scene, comprising:

• a plurality of optical fibers that directly collect light emanated by a scene and transport the collected light in segments in the optical fibers;
• a wavefront modulator located to receive collected light in segments from the optical fibers so that the collected light in segments in the optical fibers are incident on the wavefront modulator which adds or subtracts an optical phase to each individual collected light from each optical fiber to produce phase-modulated light segments, one segment per optical fiber;
• an imaging array located to receive phase-modulated light segments from the wavefront modulator;
• and
• a control unit coupled to the wavefront modulator to control the wavefront modulator, and
• wherein the wavefront modulator includes a deformable mirror or a spatial light modulator having a plurality of independently controllable pixels that respond to control commands of the control unit to add or subtract a spatially variable amount of an optical phase to a phase-modulated light segment, wherein:
• the control unit is coupled to the imaging array to provide a feedback control to each of the independently controllable pixels in response to an output of the imaging array.

An endoscope that uses light to image a scene, comprising:

• one or more light sources to produce illumination light;
• a fiber bundle that includes a distal termination end and a proximal termination end, one or more illumination optical fibers that receives the illumination light from the one or more light sources at the proximal termination end to guide the illumination light to the distal termination end to illuminate a scene to be imaged, a plurality of imaging optical fibers that directly collect light from the scene at the distal termination end without using a lensing element to collect light from the scene into the distal termination end and guide the collected light to the proximal termination end;
• a wavefront modulator including a plurality of independently controllable phase modulation pixels to produce independently controllable phases, respectively, the wavefront modulator positioned relative to the proximal termination end of the fiber bundle to receive the collected light from the imaging optical fibers in such a way that the collected light exiting different imaging optical fibers is impinged upon different phase modulation pixels of the wavefront modulator, respectively, to produce phase-modulated light segments that corresponding to the imaging optical fibers, respectively;
• and
• an optical sensor array of optical detectors located to receive the phase-modulated light segments from the wavefront modulator.