Conventional hyperspectral cameras cascade lenses and spectrometers to acquire the spectral datacube, which forms the fundamental framework for hyperspectral imaging. However, this cascading framework involves tradeoffs among spectral and imaging performances when the system is driven toward miniaturization. Here, we propose a spectral singlet lens that unifies optical imaging and computational spectrometry functions, enabling the creation of minimalist, miniaturized and high-performance hyperspectral cameras. As a paradigm, we capitalize on planar liquid crystal optics to implement the proposed framework, with each liquid-crystal unit cell acting as both phase modulator and electrically tunable spectral filter. Experiments with various targets show that the resulting millimeter-scale hyperspectral camera exhibits both high spectral fidelity ( > 95%) and high spatial resolutions ( ~1.7 times the diffraction limit). The proposed “two-in-one” framework can resolve the conflicts between spectral and imaging resolutions, which paves a practical pathway for advancing hyperspectral imaging systems toward miniaturization and portable applications.

传统的高光谱相机级联镜头和光谱仪来获取光谱数据立方体，这构成了高光谱成像的基本框架。然而，当系统朝着小型化方向发展时，这种级联框架涉及光谱和成像性能之间的权衡。在这里，我们提出了一种光谱单透镜，它统一了光学成像和计算光谱测量功能，从而能够创建极简、小型化和高性能的高光谱相机。作为一个范例，我们利用平面液晶光学来实现所提出的框架，其中每个液晶单元既充当相位调制器又充当电可调光谱滤波器。对各种目标的实验表明，由此产生的毫米级高光谱相机表现出高光谱保真度（％3E 95％）和高空间分辨率（〜衍射极限的1.7倍）。所提出的“二合一”框架可以解决光谱分辨率和成像分辨率之间的冲突，这为推进高光谱成像系统走向小型化和便携式应用铺平了实用途径。