Optical-mechanical line-scan imaging process: its information capacity and efficiency.

An expression for the information capacity of the optical-mechanical line-scan imaging process is derived, which includes the effects of blurring of spatial detail, photosensor noise, aliasing, and quantization. Both the information capacity for a fixed data density and the information efficiency (i.e., the ratio of information capacity to data density) exhibit a distinct single maximum when displayed as a function of sampling rate, and the location of this maximum is determined by the system frequency response shape, SNR, and quantization interval.