Lobster eye: technology and imaging properties

Lobster eye optics, as a wide field of view imaging system, is perfectly suited for x-ray astronomy but can be useful also in the lab. This paper presents a brief overview of the technologies developed in our group, where the glass and silicon mirrors are used to built up the Schmidt lobster eye design and mainly discuss the mirror design consequences on the resulting imaging properties of the system. Corrections of various image distortions and imperfections, either geometric, spectral or temporal in case of scanning observations have to be applied in order to get a valuable instrument. Several image processing methods are discussed and its strengths and weaknesses are shown for both astronomy and laboratory experiments.