Photonics is a critical enabling technology for the 21st century and photonics technicians are an integral part of the supporting workforce. This paper outlines a two-year AAS education program designed to product competent photonics technicians who can (1) enter the workforce directly upon graduation from the two-year program or (2) continue their education toward an appropriate four-year bachelor's degree program. As an appropriate foundation for the two-year AAS photonics program, consideration is given also to an optimal technology preparatory program for high school students who are moving towards careers in photonics.

The education received at preparatory school or university is insufficient to cover a career of around thirty years. The purpose of this presentation is to point out some fundamental aspects of continuous education. We will describe here the main tendencies of continuous education at the present timeline enterprise. Two main currents support these trends: high-efficient organization and intelligent organization. These trends will allow orientation towards a new form of continuous education that describes the new role of the educator.

The COSE report on Harnessing Light has had a global impact. This paper addresses a not-too-distant opportunity for the emerging nations around the world that have the courage and foresight to dramatically change their approach to economic development. It is a challenge to the private sector of the optics/photonics around the world. It is a call to them to stretch out and try to grab a piece of the rich commercial markets in optics and photonics that the traditional countries (the Europeans, Japanese, and US) around the world will not be able to service. I talk about a revolution in and by the small, medium, and yet to be companies. There will be far more demand by the commercial optical markets than these traditional countries will be able to service. The field of photonics and optics is quickly maturing in a very natural and predictable but revolutionary manner. In the last two years many more people recognize and appreciate the current evolutionary state of the optics markets, and have some idea of their economic size. The emphasis now needs to be on workforce development.

The demand for precision and efficiency is changing the way manufacturers from an array of industries are utilizing photonic and electro-optical technologies. This new demand has created a need for more specially trained operators than our post-secondary programs can supply. An over looked resource for solving industries personnel problems is the local tech prep high school. These programs already have (1) life long learning, (2) making technology accessible, and (3) transition from school to work as goals. They have 75% of the needed equipment in their electronic, computer, and technology labs. Add the missing laser labs and you can start a Laser Electro-Optical Technician training program at the secondary level.

Practical hands on program philosophy and ideas will be discussed. This program was planned and carried out in three Taiwan technical colleges as well as one junior college in USA and in a four year university BS degree program. The products and successes from this program and curriculum will be discussed in detail. What are the best topics and opportunity areas in optics and photonics to meet the broader social and industrial needs will be discussed.

The demand for precision and efficiency is changing the way manufacturers are utilizing photonics and electro-optical technologies. This new demand has created a need for more specially trained operators than our post-secondary programs can supply. An overlooked resource for solving industries personnel problems is the local tech prep high school. These programs already have (1) life-long learning, (2) making technology accessible, and (3) transition from school to work as goals. Tech prep schools already have 75% of the needed equipment in their electronic, computer and technology labs. Add the missing laser labs and you can start a Laser Electro-Optical Technician training program at the secondary level. This arrangement also makes it possible to launch a customized training program available to local industries to place LEOTs in their workforce in just 16 weeks.

Recently a new program of `First Year Seminar Courses' was initiated in the Faculty of Arts and Science at the University of Toronto to introduce in-coming undergraduates to the excitement of university scholarship. These are full- year elective courses, and in each course students work closely with a faculty member in groups of no more than 20 students. I shall review my experiences in these past three years in organizing a course on light, optics, and photonics. The primary aim was to use the rich story of light to bring together students of a variety of intellectual interests, in the hope of demonstrating the valuable knowledge that the cultures of the humanists and scientists can bring to an understanding of the modern world. As we are all aware, the story of light is so all- embracing that this course included not only the science of light and optics, with lasers and photonics, but light in the open air, astronomy, religion, literature, art, architecture, film, stage, health and medicine, with several of the topics discussed by guest speakers. After a brief review of the story of light from its earliest beginnings, an outline of the course will be given along with the many contributions by the students and evaluation of their efforts.

This paper is based on the claim that future major contributions in the field of imaging systems will be made by those who have a background in both optics and digital signal processing. As the introduction of Fourier transforms and linear systems theory to optics had a major impact on the design of hybrid optical/digital imaging systems, the introduction of digital signal processing into optics programs will have a major impact. Examples are given of new hybrid imaging systems that have unique performance. By jointly designing the optics and the signal processing in a digital camera, a new paradigm arises where aberration balancing takes into consideration not only the number of surfaces and indices of refraction, but also the processing capability.

Optics has been a designated domain for research since the foundation of the department of physics. One of the first graduate chooses Optics and trained most of the people working in Optics in Canada until 1985 when he retired. The Curriculum of the program in physics and later on in Physics engineering was pointing Optics as an course to take to get the diploma. Laboratories were developed to give to Physicists or Physics Engineers the tools they will need in their career. Nowadays, with the growing importance of Optics, Micro-programs were defined to permit to Mechanical, Electrical and Computer Engineers to acquire a basic knowledge of Physics. Optics Engineering is being developed.

Most students of physics and engineering are exposed to optics for the first time during their final year in high school and/or during their first year in college. That first encounter is brief and superficial, in most cases. Hence, those students might have a negative prejudice against optics, when having to select advanced courses during their second and third year in college. If we, the optics professors, want to attract the brightest students as our junior researchers, we ought to offer an exciting and challenging `introduction to the fundamentals of optics' for the advanced under graduate students in a way that eliminates any negative prejudices already during the first hour of the course. To start the course with Snellius, with the lens equation, and with similar primitive issues would chase away many of the brightest students.

Multidisciplinary team-oriented research is an effective method for investigating systems spanning multiple knowledge areas. Building on cross-functional team strategies developed for highly competitive industries, experts from a variety of technical domains can be brought together in a team and focused toward a common set of goals. However, building and maintaining these teams is an art that combines technical, social, and management skills, and requires proactive, conscious attention to enable and achieve positive results. This paper explores some avenues toward effective multi-disciplinary team building, and explores the educational potential associated with team-oriented research.

Perception has both unconscious and conscious aspects. In all cases, however, what we perceive is a model of reality. By brain construction through evolution, we divide the world into two parts--our body and the outside world. But the process is the same in both cases. We perceive a construct usually governed by sensed data but always involving memory, goals, fears, expectations, etc. As a first step toward Artificial Perception in man-made systems, we examine perception in general here.

In this paper we present a concept to train physics students in the field of integrated sensor design realized at the faculty of physics and astronomy at Heidelberg University (Germany). A laboratory for design and test of integrated sensor chips has been set up and a course program for physics students has been introduced. The work of the laboratory is illustrated by the presentation of a project to design and build a tactile vision substitution system based on so-called vision chips.

Imagery edges occur naturally in human visual systems as a consequence of redundancy reduction towards `sparse and orthogonality feature maps,' which have been recently derived from the maximum entropy information-theoretical first principle of artificial neural networks. After a brief match review of such an Independent Component Analysis or Blind Source Separation of edge maps, we explore the de- mixing condition for more than two imagery objects recognizable by an intelligent pair of cameras with memory in a time-multiplex fashion.

The optical transfer function (OTF) is widely used to investigate the focusing and imaging properties of an optical system, including image modeling, comparison of relative imaging performance, and image reconstruction. An optical system can form a 3D image of a 3D object, and the 3D OTF is a useful approach to investigating the behavior. The 3D transfer function is particularly useful for study of image formation in confocal and interference microscopes. As the OTF represents the power spectral density it is also useful for studying beam propagation and scattering. The connection with the ambiguity function is also described.

The concept of modes, or eigenfunctions, is fundamental for all wave phenomena in physics like optics, acoustics and quantum mechanics. In optics and photonics, the concept of modes is well suited to describe emission and absorption, coherence and interference, propagation and dispersion. The concept of modes consists of two aspects: first, the modes are solutions for the propagation of the light; second, the number of photons int he different modes describes the transport of energy or information. The energy density of the black body radiation, given by Planck's law, is the production of the density of modes in free space and the average number of photons per mode, given by the Bose- Einstein distribution. The transverse shape of the modes is determined by diffraction and boundary conditions. The longitudinal extension is given by the coherence length.

As science advances, it is more evident the necessity of a health interdisciplinary approach in Medicine. In the case of medical applications of light, the knowledge of the use of dispositives, equipment, diagnostic and treatment means, as well as the bases for the use of this update technologies is required. At the present moment, the outstanding work of specialized professionals of different profiles requires personnel with high professional formation in keeping with the latest trends in science and technology. The authors present here an Specialized Project in Biophotonics, with the aim of increasing the professional preparation of university graduates with an ample profile--physicists and engineers--who work in Biomedical Optics, thus contributing to the specialized formation of medic and paramedic personnel. The course is structured into six-subject-modules and into two phases. As to the basic professional formation, each one attending this course, will select between two variants of the Basic Formation Postgraduate Course: Anatomy and Physiology, Physical Bioenergetics, Clinic Bioenergetics; or Physics in Medicine, Optics and Applied Information Theory, depending on the student's professional profile. In the second phase, the General Formation Postgraduate Course: Biomedical Optics, Optical Bioenergetics and Laser in Medicine.

A discussion on the interest of the study of diffractional image formation theory in a course of Fourier Optics is carried out. We develop a general description of the partially coherent illumination case. Images of extended objects like the line and periodical structures are given for different values of the coherence parameter. The apparent transfer function is introduced as a quality criterium. For the incoherent illumination this parameter is compared with the optical transfer function.

The SPIE Education Committee has developed an outreach program aimed at enhancing the dissemination of information about optics to children in kindergarten through the 12th grade (K-12). The main impetus behind the program was that more practicing optical scientists and engineers would be willing to give lectures and demonstrations aimed at inspiring the next generation about optics if material could be made easily available. Consequently, three instructional `outreach kits' were assembled to use in teaching optics to kids in exciting and fun ways. These kits were beta-tested over the last two years at six different U.S. regional sites. Each `outreach kit' contained: (1) a workbook on Optical Demonstrations on the Overhead Projector; (2) a Science and Math Experience Manual: Light, Color and Their Uses; (3) The Optics Discovery Classroom Kit; (4) a slide show; and (5) a video on careers in optics. The best tests were aimed at evaluating the practical ways of utilizing the kits, developing easy-to-follow instructions for guiding others in their use and providing suggestions on modifications, additions, and deletions to the kits. This paper discuses this outreach program and provides details relative to the kit's composition and future plans.

As the optics/photonics industry continues to grow, the demand for workers is assumed to increase proportionally. Empirical data seem to support this assumption. This increase presents a challenge to optics/photonics education, since they control and assume responsibility for a key factor in the ability of industry to further expand. At the same time, the U.S. government through the Department of Labor and the Workforce Investment Act has requested that communities enact programs for displaced adults to transition to the workplace. A program of study is provided that would assist adults in making this transition from unemployment to the optics/photonics industry, with the necessary general work skills, occupational optics/photonics skills, and ability to progress on the job with academic foundations in math and science.

About forty university graduates have completed their specialized studies in Optics. These specialized studies enable their successful development in their professional tasks in national Cuban institutions. In the conception of the Optics Master of Science degree plan, professional improvement is considered regarding the accumulated experience, the training requirements of human resources, as well as the contemporary world development trends.

The optics facility at the University of New Mexico (UNM) are proposing to create a Master's degree program in Optical Science and Engineering. A natural complement to the highly successful Ph.D. program in optics over the past 15 years at UNM, the Master's program, unlike the Ph.D. program, will be a multiple-option program that will serve the educational, research, and training needs of an entire spectrum of students, professionals, and institutions. Currently only in the stages of a well developed proposal, it has garnered wide support from industry, academia, and government laboratories in the State of New Mexico, and is on track for an expected implementation in Fall 2000.

We have developed a new senior-level undergraduate laboratory course at the US Air Force Academy. The students perform six experiments that include; optical modulators, waveguiding, laser kinetics, CO₂ lasers, harmonic generation and the measurement of ultrashort laser pulses. These experiments were chosen so that there is an integrated theme of lasers and optics, to teach experimental methods and reinforce fundamental physics concepts.

Pilot program for Master's studies on Biomedical Optics has been developed and launched at University of Latvia in 1995. The Curriculum contains several basic subjects like Fundamentals of Biomedical Optics, Medical Lightguides, Anatomy and Physiology, Lasers and Non-coherent Light Sources, Optical Instrumentation for Healthcare, Optical Methods for Patient Treatment, Basic Physics, etc. Special English Terminology and Laboratory-Clinical Praxis are also involved, and the Master Theses is the final step for the degree award. Following one four-year teaching experience, some observations, conclusions and eventual future activities are discussed.

Optics is a key technology in a broad range of engineering and science applications of high national priority. Engineers and scientists with a sound background in this field are needed to preserve technical leadership and to establish new directions of research and development. To meet this educational need, a joint Electrical Engineering/Physics optics course sequence was created as PHYS 3445 Fundamentals of Optics and EE 4444 Optical Systems Design, both with a laboratory component. The objectives are to educate EE and Physics undergraduate students in the fundamentals of optics; in interdisciplinary problem solving; in design and analysis; in handling optical components; and in skills such as communications and team cooperation. Written technical reports in professional format are required, formal presentations are given, and participation in paper design contests is encouraged.

Simulation and modeling software is especially useful for visualization of 2D optical propagation. Based on the software package DigiOpt examples of diffractive optical effects are presented which are difficult to discuss analytically and which have been actual research subjects during the last decades. These examples are intended to demonstrate how modern software technologies can help to gain professional expertise in an efficient way.

This paper presents a complete toolbox to be used together with the MATLAB/SIMULINK software. The versatility of this software is used to form analysis blocks in the time and frequency domains, allowing the user to simulate optical fiber links of any topology, as long as the analysis of its performance face changes in the values of its parameters. Results for LED (F.D.), Quantum Well (T.D.) and Fabry Perot (F.D.) LASERs are shown.

Personal computers and the Internet have revolutionized the modern classroom in several ways. Many classes are now taught in technology-enhanced classrooms where computers are available to aid the instructor's presentation. Availability of the Internet further increases the instructor's options by providing convenient access to an abundance of outside material and by providing an effective means of distance delivery. Applications of these technologies to courses in optical fiber communications are described.

The Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA) has now replaced optoelectronic repeaters as the primary design option for extending the range and capacity of the World's fiber optic telecommunication systems. In a broader sense, optical amplifiers are the basis of all lasers. It is therefore essential that students of science and engineering have a broad appreciation of, and practical familiarity with, optical amplifiers in general, EDFAs in particular and their applications in lasers. To achieve these objectives, Strathclyde University in collaboration with OPTOSCI LTD. have developed an EDFA/Laser educator kit which enables students to experimentally investigate the gain and noise characteristics of an EDFA, including issues such as signal and pump saturation, gain efficiency, amplified spontaneous emission and optical beat noise. With a simple extension to the basic amplifier kit the students are able to construct an erbium doped fiber ring lasers and to investigate its power characteristics (threshold and slope efficiency) as a function of output coupling ratio and intra-cavity loss. The experimental objectives, design philosophies, hardware, experimental procedures and results will be examined in detail in this paper.

The Objects Project (TOP) is a 3D, interactive computer graphics system that was developed at Mississippi State University to help students learn optics. TOP runs on Silicon Graphics workstations. We describe our initial progress on WebTOP, the Web version of TOP.

Holography is a worthy topic that should become an integral part of any basic science curriculum. It embodies basic scientific principle that include the direct applications of three Nobel Prize physics concepts; it involves procedures that teaches the scientific method of problem solving; it can be learned by `doing' without previous experience; it is artistically creative; it can be appreciated by students of all ranges of abilities; and it is an open-ended subject so that specially interested students can continue to pursue deeper and more creative projects beyond the scope that fits into the curriculum. Finally, with the availability of high quality and low cost diode lasers, it is an affordable unit for any school.

After few historical and statistical data related to the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, follows a description of activities on undergraduate training in Optics at the Laboratorio de Optica, belonging to the Faculty of Astronomical and Geophysical Sciences, and on undergraduate education in Optics at the Departamento de Fisica, belonging to the Faculty of Exact Sciences.

We propose here the use of few pixel liquid crystal displays (LCD) to be used in optics experiments. Commercial LCD displays used in electronic sensors have a simple electronic, can be addressed by conventional wavegenerators and are, in addition, very cheap. These devices are governed by the same basic principles as the recently developed high- resolution crystal displays. The physical models that explain the behavior of the LCD are very interesting from an educational point of view. The predictions arising from different models can be compared by performing simple photometric measurements. By means of interferometric architectures it is possible to measure the phase modulation introduced in the interference pattern when different voltages are applied to the LCD. These devices have the ability to provide a controlled phase modulation, a feature that renders them very useful devices for phase shift interferometers. The experiences presented here can be performed in an undergraduate laboratory with a basic optical equipment.

Recently optics courses have been implemented at the High School of the UNAM. For these courses, the school purchased commercial optics kits to develop illustrative and simple experiments. In education, lasers play a dominant role for many examples of optics, for instance, interference experiments are easily performed and visualized using an inexpensive laser diode or an He-Ne laser. Teacher participation in workshops is very important to make them confident in the use of lasers and other optics tools so their students have a proper guide for hands-on optics experiments in classroom. In the case of the UNAM this kind of workshops started at the beginning of 1997 with 25 high school teachers as the initial phase for designing didactic activities in optics. As part of these activities we have developed forty additional experiments, apart from the ten projects included in the kit manual. In almost all of them, we used a He-Ne laser. Experiments such as air refractive index measurements, irradiance measurements using simple and inexpensive photodetectors, optical activity and polarization, retardation plates, photoelasticity, diffraction and interference, scattering and polarization of light in a scattered medium, and many others were developed. They are performed using the elements provided by the kit and additional and simple items easy to obtain or to make.

The equation for the conservation of irradiance is deduced from the paraxial wave equation. This formulation is presented in an optics Masters course, with the aim of showing to students its utility in the recuperation of the phase of a wavefront with just the measurements of irradiance.

In the present investigation, an optical transducer has been developed for materials testing and evaluation of different electrochemical phenomena. The optical transducer was developed by incorporating methods of holographic interferometry for measuring microscopic deformation and electrochemical techniques for determining the corrosion current of metallic samples in aqueous solutions. In addition, the optical transducer was applied not only as an electrometer for measuring different electrochemical parameters but also, the optical transducer was applied as a 3D-interferometric microscope for detecting different micro- alterations at a metal surface in aqueous solution at a microscopic scale.

In many fields of Physics and Engineering the linear systems are studied. The Fourier Transform is a powerful tool for analyzing their behavior in terms of the frequency contents, both for the input signal and the output signal. The concept of Fourier Transform is generally introduced by mathematical tools. An optical correlator is a set-up that allows to display the decomposition of a signal (1D or 2D) and the processing of this signal. In this communication we use an optical correlator with two arms that gives the display of the Fourier plane and the final plane simultaneously. In the first arm, we can visualize the decomposition of the signal in the Fourier space with the application of a given filter. The effect of the filter on the signal is observed in the second arm. The detection is performed by means of CCD cameras and displayed on the computer monitor. Binary filters help to understand the frequency contents of a signal by substraction of frequencies. Gray level filters and complex valued filters allow the synthesis of any transfer function. In particular we show the application to pattern recognition.

The pedagogical implementation of new optical contents inclusion in the curricula of Technical Sciences University Courses is presented in this paper. The application of updated pedagogical trends enables the development of a pedagogical system in the Optics teaching that contributes to the achievement of a qualitatively higher teaching- learning process.

Optics students' need for statistical knowledge is investigated. By statistics I mean both probability and statistics. By starting with a simple interferometer some different cases are presented where, from no need for statistical knowledge, one reaches cases where simple probability is needed and finally cases that require profound knowledge of statistics.

This paper reviews the theoretical basis of two laser interferometry vibration measuring methods of high accuracy, i.e., frequency ratio and Bessel function minimum point. These techniques are used for low and high vibration frequencies, respectively. The most recent experimental developments are highlighted and contributions to the classic models are shown.

In this conference paper we present the development of an interactive tool for gallium arsenide semiconductor modeling. This interactive tool consists in a software package, which is able to model four basic physical phenomena, such as Fermi Level and Mobility, and a few examples of semiconductor devices. We encourage the use of this tool in either, electronic physics lectures or photonics lectures in order to help the complete understanding of these phenomena and devices. GaAsMod can be used to teach in engineering levels as well as in the associate engineering degrees (ISCED5).

The optimization of an optical system benefits greatly from a study of its aberrations and an identification of each of its elements' contribution to the overall aberration figures. The matrix formalism developed by one of the authors was the object of a previous paper and allows the expression of image-space coordinates as high-order polynomials of object-space coordinates. In this paper we approach the question of aberrations, both through the evaluation of the wavefront evolution along the system and its departure from the ideal spherical shape and the use of ray density plots. Using seventh-order matrix modeling, we can calculate the optical path between any two points of a ray as it travels along the optical system and we define the wavefront as the locus of the points with any given optical path; the results are presented on the form of traces of the wavefront on the tangential plane, although the formalism would also permit sagittal plane plots. Ray density plots are obtained by actual derivation of the seventh-order polynomials.

We present a teaching strategy combining computer simulation and laboratories as a way of introducing personalized teaching and considering new communication codes in order to engage students in a dynamic learning process, even in large groups at the university, focusing on a critical approach, adaptability to various kinds of languages and representations, continuous testing of the validity of their hypothesis, their limits and those of the models and solutions suggested, as a way of preparing individuals capable of generating and/or interpreting and applying the science of the third millennium. This is an ambitious idea and, in order to succeed in all that was mentioned above, non-conventional elements, like computers, were incorporated to the teaching process to get the students interested and to motivate them so that they can better interact. The introductory experience involves the design of software about Fresnel Equations and aims to solve conceptual problems that appear when assigning negative values to the amplitudes of electromagnetic waves at an interface. Conceptual implications, like the analysis of changes of phase and amplitude, allow then the understanding of thin film interference phenomena, critical angle, polarization angle... The program is interactive and designed in such a way that the user him/herself has to find out the conditions of the model that is being used, and to interpret and/or predict results on that basis. The experience is complemented with very simple laboratory equipment that allows for hands-on testing of the students' predictions.

The spectral properties of almost-Gaussian functions are considered and applied to the characterization to the second-order approximation in the expansion of the coefficients of almost-perfect optical pulses. Specifically, adding small amounts of odd-order Hermite-Gaussians to a Gaussian induces a second-order increase in the time- bandwidth product, while the increase in the time-bandwidth product from adding even-order Hermite-Gaussian is higher- order and hence smaller. We indicate the class of small perturbations of Gaussian functions which change neither the temporal profile of the intensity nor the intensity of the spectral profile. We compare the almost-Gaussian functions with femtosecond temporal width pulses data given by a Ti:Sapphire laser.

From the general definition of dispersion power, analytic expressions are deduced for the chromatic dispersion of a prism and a diffraction grating. This deduction is routinely presented in an optics postgraduate course, where emphasis is placed on the explanation of the phenomenon of dispersion in two apparently distinct optical elements.

The fractional Fourier transform is an important tool for both signal processing and optical communities. This paper presents a tutorial which includes the major related aspects of this transformation.

In general, in the current programs of the Optics courses for the different teaching levels the diffraction and interference phenomena are included. The depth degree of the corresponding explanations depends on the mathematical knowledge of the students. Still in the basic university level, in our means, these tools don't allow the presentation of complete explanations based on the theory of the coherence and/or the scalar theory of the diffraction. However, as corollary of the treatment of those topics it is habitual, in the last years, the presentation of the subject of holography like application example and like a way to integrate the concepts of coherence, interference, diffraction and imaging formation, although this last aspect is only demonstrated by the practical experience. As an intermediate step, with the purpose of reinforcing the idea of the imaging formation for diffraction (Fourier images), it is interesting to show and to discuss self-imaging phenomena and some of their applications, before presenting the holography. The employment of this strategy in courses of professors' formation is commented.

Using like basic idea that the similar equations corresponds to the similar models and they can explain similar phenomena with characteristic own, a strategy has been developed for the integrated treatment of the waves teaching. The analogies pointed out by the mathematical equations allow unifying topics like that of the propagation of the electromagnetic energy, the propagation of the energy through the matter and the mechanic-quantum treatment of the systems evolution. The wealth of the analysis of the meanings of the wave functions as well as of the coefficients involved in the equations allows to carry out a conceptual synthesis of the natural phenomenology. Results of the application of this strategy in basic university courses are commented.

In this communication we will present new results and developments of a pedagogical experiment undertaken, since 1995, within the classes of Image Processing and Fiber Optics of the Applied Physics undergraduate course of the Physics Department of the University of Minho. The simple research works undertaken by the students within the classes' frame over last three years will be briefly discussed and preliminary conclusion drawn. This `Learning by research' project relies on a major statement: the learning process requires always an active critical participation of the students. This is especially true for science and technology students. Thus to the students is given almost entire liberty and responsibility even in the process of choosing and defining the research to be undertaken. We limited ourselves to assess the development of the project orienting them and point out different or pertinent points of view when strictly necessary.

On the frames of the pedagogic project developed over the last four years by the first author `Learning by research', on this communication we will make a detailed presentation of one research work undertaken by the students on the classes of Image Processing of the Applied Physics undergraduate course of the Physics Department of the University of Minho.

It is presented a quite simple procedure for measuring the astigmatism aberration of lenses by using an optometric and ophthalmic instrument, the retinoscope, as a focimeter.

In this paper a lens correction algorithm based on the see- saw diagram developed by Burch is described. The see-saw diagram describes the image correction in rotationally symmetric systems over a finite field of view by means of aspherics surfaces. The algorithm is applied to the design of some basic telescopic configurations such as the classical Cassegrain telescope, the Dall-Kirkham telescope, the Pressman-Camichel telescope and the Ritchey-Chretien telescope in order to show a physically visualizable concept of image correction for optical systems that employ aspheric surfaces. By using the see-saw method the student can visualize the different possible configurations of such telescopes as well as their performances and also the student will be able to understand that it is not always possible to correct more primary aberrations by aspherizing more surfaces.

First we present here the main post-graduate courses proposed in France both for physicians and engineers in medical optronics. After we explain which medical domains are concerned by this teaching, essentially computer assisted surgery, telemedicine and functional exploration. Then we show the main research axes in these fields, in which new jobs have to be invented and new educational approaches have to be prepared in order to satisfy the demand coming both from hospitals (mainly referent hospitals) and from industry (essentially medical imaging and instrumentation companies). Finally we will conclude that medical optronics is an important step in an entire chain of acquisition and processing of medical data, capable to create the medical knowledge a surgeon or a physician needs for diagnosis or therapy purposes. Optimizing the teaching of medical optronics needs a complete integration from acquiring to modeling the medical reality. This tendency to give a holistic education in medical imaging and instrumentation is called `Model driven Acquisition' learning.

In the context of the classical study of optical systems within the geometrical Gauss approximation, the cardinal elements are efficiently obtained with the aid of the transfer matrix between the input and output planes of the system. In order to take into account the geometrical aberrations, a ray tracing approach, using the Snell- Descartes laws, has been implemented in an interactive software. Both methods are applied for measuring the correction to be done to a human eye suffering from ametropia. This software may be used by optometrists and ophthalmologists for solving the problems encountered when considering this pathology. The ray tracing approach gives a significant improvement and could be very helpful for a better understanding of an eventual surgical act.

We propose in this paper to deal with the notion of medical image registration: both physicians and surgeons need in the patient room or in the operation theater images of the medical target to reach and treat; these images can be very precise and come from a pre-operative acquisition device (NMR, CT-scanner,...) or from a per-operative set of sensors (active or passive infra-red sensors, laser acquisition, numerical 2D X rays, 3D echography,...). The main problem is then how to compare these multi-modal images having different resolutions and extracting different features (anatomic or functional) from the patient medical reality? In a first section, we present the hard side with essentially optical sensing methods; after, in a second section, we present an example of matching algorithm built in order to compare and super-impose pre- and per-operative images.