This study presents the method of extracting shape design data on any aspheric lens by reverse engineering. The design formula for aspheric lenses is needed in almost all of the design, manufacture and measuring processes. The difficulty in designing the lens lies in the fact that it uses a complex formula for the aspheric surface, and many of the preliminary design values must be selected before actually inserting them into the formula. If the values could be extracted from an aspheric lens for which the structural design information is unknown and used in designing other lenses of similar characteristics, the difficulties in designing and measuring aspheric lens could be reduced. Therefore, in this study, the concept of reverse engineering was applied to demonstrate the method of extracting shape design information of aspheric lens from an arbitrary aspheric lens.
