Multipinhole

Multipinhole refers to imaging devices and techniques that use more than one pinhole aperture to form or sample an image. Traditional pinhole cameras rely on a single small aperture to project an inverted image on a surface. Multipinhole designs replace or augment that single aperture with an array of holes, producing multiple projections that are recorded either separately or simultaneously on a sensor.

In photography and art, multipinhole cameras place several pinholes on a plate with a photosensitive plane behind it. Each hole forms its own image; the result can be a mosaic of offset views or, with reconstruction, a wider synthetic field of view. Manufacturing uses drilled metal plates or printed hole arrays. Benefits include broader depth of field and multiple viewpoints in one exposure; challenges include image overlap and parallax, and sometimes the need for post-processing to compose or separate images.

In scientific and medical imaging, multipinhole arrangements increase light collection and angular sampling. In single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), multipinhole collimators use many small holes in a tungsten plate to allow photons to reach the detector from a larger solid angle, enabling faster acquisitions or higher resolution. Reconstruction must handle overlapping projections and depth effects; calibration and alignment are important for quantitative results.

Design considerations include hole size, spacing, pattern (e.g., hexagonal or circular), plate thickness, and the distance to the image plane. The term also appears in X-ray and neutron imaging for multi-aperture geometries.