Patent 7616389 was granted and assigned to Olympus Group on November, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
The invention relates to an optical system adapted to take or project high-definition images with well corrected aberrations for the purpose of taking images from a 360° panoramic scene on a cylindrical, conical or other three-dimensional surface or project such a three-dimensional display surface onto a 360° field of view. Images from the 360° panoramic scene are formed on a rotationally symmetric, three-dimensional image surface 3. The optical system comprises at least one rotationally symmetric reflective surface 2, the position of an entrance pupil 4s with respect to a sagittal section is different from the position of an exit pupil 4m with respect to a meridional section.