Index class apertures--a class of flexible coded aperture.

A class of flexible coded apertures, called index class apertures, is presented. The configurations are shown to possess similar properties to the geometric apertures of Gourlay and Stephen [Appl. Opt.22, 4042 (1983)], and it is demonstrated that the modified uniformly redundant arrays (MURAs) are a special case of the index class apertures. The apertures are shown to offer both a larger range of throughput values and better imaging capability than is available to the geometric apertures, while at the same time possessing more rigidity of structure than other designs, such as the MURAs and the uniformly redundant arrays.