Lens Design: Automatic and quasi-autonomous computational methods and techniques is the first book for new and experienced lens designers that interactively explains modern lens design methods to provide the reader with a deeper understanding of the subject by actually running example lenses and exploring variations of them. Beginning with the basics, the reader is taken step-by-step through the elements of lens design crucial to achieving successful outcomes. A variety of optical designs are considered, among which are camera lenses, zoom lenses, telescopes, diffractive optical elements, aspheric lenses, laser optics, and free-form mirror systems. The topology of the lens design landscape, why there are many solutions, and how to select a preferred solution are discussed. Construction of merit functions for optimization and techniques to determine allowable tolerances for manufacture of lenses are also covered in detail. Dilworth presents how to design and analyze lens systems, his innovative and unique developments in automated lens design that have significant utility in mitigating the growing lack of professional lens designers, as well as sharing insight to improving the efficiency and creativity of professional lens designers. An exciting part of this book explains new advances in quasi-autonomous lens design tools that can design, starting with plane-parallel surfaces, complex fixed focus and zoom lenses in a brief time compared with traditional tools that can require many days or weeks of tedious work. Additional tools discussed are automatic glass selection, artificial intelligence, automatic insertion and deletion of surfaces, athermal design, narcissus, and ghost elimination.

With tips and ideas resulting from more than 50 years of experience, the reader will learn the pros and cons of traditional design tools and the role of aberration theory today. Experienced and aspiring lens designers who master the power of the tools, methods, and principles taught in this book will be able to develop excellent designs now and in the future.

Donald Dilworth is president of Optical Systems Design Inc and has been intensively involved in the development and application of computer software for optical design since 1961. He has extensive experience in most areas of lens design, particularly in thermal infrared systems, and he is the author of the well-known SYNOPSYS lens design program, which is used by lens designers worldwide. As author of SYNOPSYS and developer of the popular Pseudo-Second Derivative optimization method, Dilworth has advanced the state of the art in artificial intelligence.

Dilworth was senior principal development engineer at the Honeywell Radiation Center, where he was responsible for conceptual and detailed design, tolerancing, and analysis of numerous infrared and visible-light systems, including star trackers, periscope optics and forward-looking infrared systems.

He also served as director of the optical design department at Baus Optics Inc, where he developed and implemented techniques for the design of geometric and thin-film optics. Prior to joining Baus Optics, he was employed by Itek Corp as senior optical physicist. In this capacity he was responsible for designing a variety of advanced optical systems, including aerial photographic lenses used on the recently declassified Corona project, aspheric systems, multilayer dielectric coatings and a submarine periscope.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received a BS in physics in 1961, he developed computational techniques for optical and thin-film design, which were applied to the design of the optical navigation equipment for the Apollo project.