render_compare_prescriptions — OPTICS lensrender op

• Data kinds: none → table (an op determined by its arguments alone — it takes no image or data input)

• Call: import fullseye as fs; fs.ledger.render_compare_prescriptions(systems=None, scene=None, sensor=None, labels=None, edge_roi=None, fields=(0.0, 0.7, 1.0), field_max=None, **render_kw) -> 'dict' (to call the implementation directly, import lensrender; lensrender.render_compare_prescriptions(systems=None, scene=None, sensor=None, labels=None, edge_roi=None, fields=(0.0, 0.7, 1.0), field_max=None, **render_kw) -> 'dict'; from the registry, opsoptics.get("render_compare_prescriptions"))

• GPU: none (CPU reference implementation only)

Usage

Render the same scene through two or more prescriptions and tabulate how good each picture is -> dict.

Every system is rendered by render_scene_through_lens with the same *scene*, *sensor* and render_kw (give focus_mm to focus each one on the scene). The table has one row per system: the effective focal length and f-number, the RMS spot radius (um) at the *fields* (fractions of the half diagonal of the sensor, or of *field_max* - an object height in mm, degrees for an object at infinity - when the picture covers only the middle of the lens's field; from raytrace.spot_stats), the relative illumination at the corner (lensimage's traced value), the distortion at the corner (%, lensimage.distortion_map), the lateral colour at 0.7 field (um, raytrace.chromatic_shift) and, when *edge_roi* (y0, y1, x0, x1) encloses a slanted edge of the scene in the picture, its 10-90 % rise width and MTF50 (edgesfr, cycles per pixel; the ESF is binned at 1/4 pixel, or more coarsely when the tilt of a blurred edge cannot be estimated) measured on the noiseless render. Fields the lens cannot reach are NaN. Also images (the renders) and labels.

Default: the doublet and the singlet prescriptions of raytrace.example_system.

Family-wide input contract (fail-closed)

Every optics op validates its input before computing (nothing slips through silently):

• Units are baked into the argument name — _mm / _um / _deg / _mrad. Confusing mm with µm does not crash; it yields a plausible-looking wrong answer, so the name prevents it. Nothing here guesses the unit from the magnitude.

• Strings raise ValueError — float('50') succeeds, so an unparsed configuration value would slip through as a length (measured: thin_lens('50', '200') returned a plausible 66.667 mm). bool is refused too, as the implicit promotion True == 1.

• complex / masked arrays raise ValueError (real-valued slots only; silently dropping the imaginary part or peeling off the mask is refused). NaN/Inf raises ValueError on every input. Exception, declared: the u_map of bottle_fit_from_pattern takes pixels that could not be measured as NaN (infinity is still refused).

• Division by zero and its relatives are refused by name: focal length 0, radius of curvature 0, refractive index <= 0, a fully opaque aperture (all zeros, so the normalisation is 0/0), a PSF whose sum is <= 0, a Stokes vector with S0 = 0, and an object sitting at the front focal point (the image is at infinity).

• Only two ops return a non-finite value, and both state it as a contract: depth_of_field returns far_mm = inf beyond the hyperfocal distance (that is what the hyperfocal distance means), and gaussian_beam returns wavefront_radius_mm = inf at the waist (the radius of curvature of a plane wavefront). Both also return a finite companion (far_is_infinite / curvature_per_mm). Any other silent NaN/Inf is detected internally and raises ValueError — "float64 overflowed" and "the answer is infinite" are different claims, so the first is never returned wearing the face of the second. Exception, declared: bottle_background_map returns NaN in u_mm for pixels whose ray is unusable (total internal reflection and the like), together with a valid mask and the counts.

• Size caps: generated grids are capped by optics.MAX_GRID (4096); supplied fields/PSFs/apertures by optics.MAX_FIELD_ELEMENTS (2^24); ABCD element chains by optics.MAX_SYSTEM_ELEMENTS (1024); Zernike by MAX_ZERNIKE_TERMS (512) / MAX_ZERNIKE_ORDER (40) / MAX_ZERNIKE_BASIS (2^25). This closes, fail-closed, the paths where a small argument triggers a huge internal allocation (measured: n_max=40 × 4096² needs 108 GB).

• Physically impossible states are refused too: a Stokes vector with degree of polarisation > 1, negative transmittance, negative intensity, and invalid Zernike indices such as n-|m| odd.

Detailed usage guide

• optics_imaging family guide

References (sample data, literature)

• Sample-data catalog (download URLs / licences) — 2-D uses skimage.data (BSD/public domain) plus synthetic images; 3-D lists download URLs for real data sources (Stanford, PDS, …).

• Operator provenance and references — the sources of the research/methods this op family came from.

• The canonical algorithm (author, year) and its uses are named in the family usage guide above.

Runnable examples (verified samples that actually call this op)

• poc_photograph_through_prescription — py -3.11 examples/poc_photograph_through_prescription.py

Ops the type connects to (they accept table as input)

abcd_matrix · wavefront_stats · sfr_from_edge · paraxial_trace · seidel_coefficients · spot_stats · tolerance_analysis · wavefront_from_opd

Same category (lensrender)

lens_scene · exit_pupil_samples · trace_sensor_rays · scene_radiance · render_scene_through_lens · bokeh_shape · render_ghost_overlay


*Provenance: lensrender.py — OPTICS operator registry. This per-op note is generated by tools/opdocs.py md (do not hand-edit).*

© 2026 Kazufumi Furuse — Fullseye operator documentation. Licensed under Apache-2.0.