Applied Nanophotonics, Liquid Crystals and Biomedical Optics

The invention is a method for providing Tunable Extended Depth of Field (TEDOF) to an optical system. The method comprises: (a) providing at least one tunable Spatial Light Modulator (SLM) in the pupil plane or in the conjugate plane of the pupil plane of the optical system; (b) building a database of masks tailored to the structure of the tunable SLMs; (c) using the optical system to grab at least two images using different masks from the database of masks; and (d) time multiplexing the wavefront profiles of the at least two images to produce a final image. Each of the profiles in the database gives a Depth of Field (DOF) lower than the DOF of the final image.