Skew ray tracing and sensitivity analysis of ellipsoidal optical boundary surfaces

The 4 x 4 homogeneous transformation matrix is one of the most commonly applied mathematical tools in the fields of robotics, mechanisms and computer graphics. Here we extend further this mathematical tool to geometrical optics by addressing the following two topics: (1) skew ray tracing to determine the paths of reflected/refracted skew rays crossing ellipsoidal boundary surfaces; and (2) sensitivity analysis to determine via direct mathematical analysis the differential changes of the incident point and the reflected/refracted vector with respect to changes in the incident light source. The proposed ray tracing and sensitivity analysis are projected as the nucleus of other geometrical optical computations. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.