Image formation by a biological curved mirror array of the fisheye in the deep-sea environment

In this paper, we present the imaging formation process of the piecewise mirror eyes of the deep-sea spookfish, which has a strange combination of refractive and reflective eyes. The biological reflective eye structure is formulated to the curved surface's flat mirror array. Zemax is utilized to evaluate optical features such as the modulation transfer function, distortion, and imaging performances. However, the natural images are highly distorted, and the resolution is lower than expected. Therefore, we increase the number of piecewise mirrors of the fisheye to see higher quality images, which can be improved entirely by the mirror shapes. Finally, the fisheye's imaging analysis reveals the deep-sea creature's resolution limit and also shows the possibility of artificial and biomimetic camera applications. (C) 2021 Optical Society of America