I'm not sure on the implementation details of this particular method, and not really qualified to score anyone's understanding of anything in this field :-) but

I'm not sure on the implementation details of this particular method, and not really qualified to score anyone's understanding of anything in this field :-) but the shape of what you say is correct - you're modelling the physics of what happens in a lens system X (X can be a range of systems of course, not necessarily one particular system, but you get the idea), and in an alternate system Y (in this case Y is no lens, but a coded aperture used to add extra contextual information to the captured light) so you can use software to do a virtualised mapping of what your light captured from the scene via system Y would have looked like if had instead passed through system X - in other words, estimating virtually what a photo of the scene would have looked like if you'd used a lens, even though you've actually got no lens. Very clever application indeed!