AI RESEARCH

Eleven Primitives and Three Gates: The Universal Structure of Computational Imaging

arXiv CS.CV

ArXi:2603.13521v1 Announce Type: new Computational imaging systems -- from coded-aperture cameras to cryo-electron microscopes -- span five carrier families yet share a hidden structural simplicity. We prove that every imaging forward model decomposes into a directed acyclic graph over exactly 11 physically typed primitives (Finite Primitive Basis Theorem) -- a sufficient and minimal basis that provides a compositional language for designing any imaging modality.