Variable aperture lucky look approach to imaging through deep turbulence

Jonathan M. Mooney; James E. Murguia

doi:10.1117/12.2303857

11 May 2018 Variable aperture lucky look approach to imaging through deep turbulence

Proceedings Volume 10650, Long-Range Imaging III; 106500D (2018) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2303857
Event: SPIE Defense + Security, 2018, Orlando, FL, United States

Abstract

We report on a technique for reducing the image degradation introduced by viewing through deep turbulence. The approach uses a variable aperture that was designed to maintain the telescope’s theoretical resolving power. The technique combines the variable aperture sensor with post processing to form a turbulence restored image. Local wavefront tilt is corrected using local image registration. Lucky look processing performed in the frequency domain is used to combine the best aspects of each image in a sequence of frames to form the final image product. The approach was demonstrated on imagery of targets of opportunity on the Boston skyline observed through a 55-mile nearlyhorizontal path from Pack Monadnock in southern New Hampshire. Quantitative assessment of image quality is based on the MTF which is estimated from edges within the images. This is performed for imagery acquired with and without the variable aperture, and the effectiveness of the approach is evaluated by comparing the results. In most cases, the reduced aperture is found to improve performance significantly relative to the full aperture.

Conference Presentation

Citation Download Citation

Jonathan M. Mooney and James E. Murguia "Variable aperture lucky look approach to imaging through deep turbulence", Proc. SPIE 10650, Long-Range Imaging III, 106500D (11 May 2018); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2303857

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