Derivation and application of an anisoplanatic optical transfer function for blind deconvolution of laser radar imagery

Adam MacDonald; Stephen Cain

doi:10.1117/12.618109

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23 August 2005 Derivation and application of an anisoplanatic optical transfer function for blind deconvolution of laser radar imagery

Adam MacDonald, Stephen Cain

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Proceedings Volume 5896, Unconventional Imaging; 589603 (2005) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.618109
Event: Optics and Photonics 2005, 2005, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

Considerable tactical utility is anticipated for systems that coherently illuminate remote target scenes to form detailed images over long, turbulent optical paths through wide FOV optical components. Typical viewing conditions greatly exceed the isoplanatic angle, and isoplanatic patch sizes approach the area of individual pixels on the imaging array. Although adaptive optical systems have met limited success in the restoration of anisoplanatically formed images, such hardware is unsuitable for tactical applications, and requires multiple point-source imagery to adapt the optical system to the turbulence. Our previous work demonstrated a fast, information-theoretic postprocessing algorithm that seeks to jointly maximize the likelihood of the image given a remote scene, as well as an estimate for Fried's seeing parameter to describe current atmospheric conditions. That research employed a short-exposure OTF to model the anisoplanatic system response for a series of motion-compensated images. Although results from the algorithm were encouraging, it was understood that the short-exposure OTF provided an optimistic model for the overall anisoplanatic blur function caused by turbulence. A more accurate OTF accounts for not only the global shift of each image collected in the ensemble, but also for the blur induced by random and uncorrelated shifts of each of the many isoplanatic patches collected at the imaging device. This research complements the blind deconvolution algorithm by deriving an anisoplanatic OTF (AOTF) that better models the blur function of a motion-compensated ensemble of images. Results are presented that compare the recovered images obtained using both the short-exposure OTF as well as the AOTF.

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Adam MacDonald and Stephen Cain "Derivation and application of an anisoplanatic optical transfer function for blind deconvolution of laser radar imagery", Proc. SPIE 5896, Unconventional Imaging, 589603 (23 August 2005); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.618109

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