Speckle reduction by a rotating aperture at the fourier transform plane

Statistical properties of the time-averaged speckle-reduced pattern at the image plane of a coherently illuminated uniform diffuse object are theoretically and experimentally studied. The diffuse object is assumed to be approximated by a deep random phase screen and zero-mean circular complex Gaussian statistics is also assumed to hold for the formation of speckles. The time-averaging process is performed by using a rotating aperture at the Fourier transform plane of the object. A theoretical study of the speckle reduction is conducted for a rotating Gaussian soft aperture at the Fourier transform plane. Expressions are analytically derived for the mean, autocorrelation function, power spectrum, and contrast of the time-averaged speckle pattern at the image plane. In particular, the contrast of the time-averaged speckle pattern is theoretically evaluated and its characteristics are discussed in detail. The theoretical results for the contrast are experimentally confirmed using a TV/film recording system. Excellent agreement between theoretical and experimental results is obtained.     

激光片光三维传感中降低散斑影响的新方法

提出一种激光片光三维传感中降低散斑影响的新方法,片光面内扫描合成孔径法。通过向被测物体表面投射面内扫描的片状激光束,产生空间变化的动态散斑光场,这样的光场在成像透镜光瞳平面上的移动,其时间平均效果等效于利用了一个大的“合成孔径”,降低了散斑的影响,明显地提高了测量精度。文中给出了合成孔径的理论分析和三维面形测量的实验结果。     

Contrast of time-averaged image speckle pattern for a vibrating object

In vibration analysis by speckle photography it is qualitatively known that the contrast of speckle patterns averaged in the exposure time varies, depending on the object motion. In this paper, the contrast of time-averaged image speckle patterns is theoretically evaluated and found to be determined by the ratio of the sinusoidally oscillating amplitude of the object motion to the average size of static speckles. An effect of the film response on the contrast of time-averaged speckle patterns is also studied.     

Measurements of axial displacements undergone by a diffusing object in speckle photography

The speckles of the image plane of an object are both radially shifted and decorrelated when the object is axially translated through an amount ?. We demonstrate that this radial shift, which is related to the position of the pupil of the optical system, disappears when the pupil lies in the back focal plane of the imaging lens. However, if the irradiance of the image plane is twice recorded on a photographic plate which is laterally shifted through ζ_H between the exposures, the minimum value of the contrast of the Fourier fringes exhibited by the plate after processing, gives the value of ? if ? is less than a particular value, ?_M which will be defined. Also we propose a new speckle measurement method in which the fringes are automatically removed when ? is greater than ?_M. We record the image of the object illuminated in convergent light through an amplitude diffuser placed in the Fourier plane of the object. The mean speckle speckle size of the diffuser is equal to the mean size of the speckles generated by the object in its Fourier plane.     

散斑剪切干涉条纹特性的实验研究

本文通过位移位相存在的真实性实验、小孔滤波的必要性实验、位移梯度的解相关性实验,证实了散斑剪切于涉术的条纹是由物体变形所引起的“位移位相”和“位移微分位相”以及由位移和位移微分共同决定的“附加位相”之和的余弦条纹。实验证实这种余弦条纹的分布,随着滤波孔的位置而变化,它的衬比随着位移和位移梯度的增大而下降。特别是,当在象面上一点相遇的两个物点的象面散斑位移之差的模值大于散斑的直径时,两者相遇的象点上的条纹消失。     

Phase aberration correction in medical ultrasound using speckle brightness as a quality factor

Medical ultrasonic images are degraded by tissues with inhomogeneous acoustic velocities. The resulting phase aberration raises the off-peak response of the imaging system's point spread function (PSF), decreasing dynamic range. In extreme cases, multiple images of a single target are displayed. Phase aberration may become a limiting factor to image quality as ultrasonic frequency and aperture size are increased in order to improve spatial resolution. A method is proposed to correct for unknown phase aberration, which uses speckle brightness as a quality factor. The phase delays of a phased array transducer are modified, element by element, to maximize mean speckle brightness in a region of interest. The technique proposed is analogous to the correction technique used by Muller and Buffington [J. Opt. Soc. Am. 64 (9), 1200-1209 (1974)] to adaptively focus incoherent optical telescopes. The method is demonstrated using a computer model with several different simulated aberration profiles. With this model, mean speckle brightness is calculated using the two-dimensional PSF. Experiments have also been conducted in which speckle brightness is shown to increase as the phase delays of an ultrasonic scanner are modified in order to compensate for a rippled aberrating layer made of silicone rubber. The characteristics of the proposed method, and the possibility of employing it clinically to correct for unknown inhomogeneities in acoustic velocity, are discussed.     

Measurement of surface roughness properties using speckle patterns with non-gaussian statistics

The surface roughness properties (i.e. the rms surface roughness and the correlation length) of strong diffuse objects are investigated by using the speckle patterns which obeys the non-gaussian statistics. The intimate linear relation is found to exist between the rms surface roughness of objects and the maximum contrast obtained from the varying curves of the average image speckle contrast as a function of the point spread of an optical imaging system. The correlation length of surface roughness of objects is related to the averaged intensity distribution of speckle patterns produced at the far-field diffraction plane. It now becomes clear that the rms roughness and the correlation length of strong diffuse objects are determined, respectively, from the maximum speckle contrast at the image plane and the averaged speckle intensity distribution at the far-field diffraction plane.     

Vibration analysis by laser speckle correlation

Time-averaged laser speckle correlation is used for flexural vibration-studies. The proposed method employs a diverging laser beam to illuminate the test object and records the object image at a defocused plane with a CCD camera. The speckle correlation coefficient is a function of the out-of-plane tilt of the object. The time-averaged speckle pattern recorded with the object vibrating at a natural mode is subtracted from the one recorded in a static condition. The anti-nodes of the vibrating object can then be identified easily on the subtracted image. A brief analysis of the technique and some experimental results on a cantilever beam and a vibrating plate are presented.     

Laser speckle decorrelation in NDT

The random noise of the laser speckle field which develops at the focusing plane of an imaging system, is, by now, efficiently used in several interferometric techniques as an information carrier of the macroscopic wavefront distortion induced by the surface displacement field of the object under investigation. The actual noise in this kind of techniques is represented by the speckle decorrelation at the image plane — i.e. the destruction of the carrier — which may be caused by the modification of the texture surface (e.g. by yielding under a severe stress state), but it is inherently produced by the same displacement field under measurement. In the paper the phenomenon of laser speckle decorrelation is numerically simulated and experimentally investigated with the aim of estimating its sensitivity to local deformation and assessing a possible field of application. Satisfactory results in the field of NDT of multilayer fiber-reinforced composites were obtained by reducing the diaphragm of the lens to increase the sensitivity of the imaging system to speckle decorrelation induced by local deformation; unfortunately this simple approach requires a considerable amount of laser power for illuminating the object. Different aperture shapes were therefore numerically simulated which provided improved efficiency and sensitivity and whereby a semi-quantitative analysis of the displacement field could be experimented.     

Digital color holographic recording and reconstruction using synthetic aperture and multiple reference waves

This paper presents a method for recording and reconstructing high-quality digital color holographic images. The synthetic aperture technique is used to improve the resolution of the reconstructed image and also reduce the speckle size in the reconstruction plane. Subsequently, the multiple reference wave technique is used to suppress speckle noise in the reconstructed color holographic image by superposing speckle fields with different distributions. The final high-quality color holographic image is obtained due to the resolution improvement and speckle noise reduction achieved by the two techniques. Our method has potential applications in the digital color holographic displays.     

Ein Experiment zur Überschreitung der Abbeschen Auflösungsgrenze

It is possible to overcome the Abbe limit of resolution by a factor two. For this one needs the A PRIORI knowledge, that the object is not birefringent or dichroic. That is to say, the object acts identically on both of the independant polarization components of the incident light. Then already one polarization component would be enough to form an image as complete as it is permitted by the lens system and by the aperture. The other polarization component would produce an identical image. Hence the capacity of the other polarization component to carry information from the object plane to the image plane is vasted. This vaste can be avoided by means of a special set up, containing e.g. twoWollaston prism. The result is the doubling in resolution without any increase of the aperture. This has been confirmed experimentally both for coherent and incoherent illumination.     

Influence of the volume speckle on fiber specklegram sensors based on four-wave mixing in photorefractive materials

In this work, the dependence on the speckle size in the performance of a micro displacement sensor based on fiber specklegrams stored in a photorefractive BSO (Bi₁₂SiO₂₀) crystal is experimentally demonstrated. In our experimental setup, a plastic optical fiber (POF) was used to generate a subjective speckle pattern which was recorded in the crystal by using a four-wave mixing arrangement in transmission geometry. The speckle size was controlled by modifying the diameter of a pupil aperture adjacent to a lens producing the image of the speckle. The signal speckle beam was mixed into the crystal with two counter propagating pump beams to generate a fourth beam which is proportional to the conjugate of the original speckle beam. Real time fringe patterns were obtained at the output of the system by producing micro displacements of the fiber output end. Increases of the phase conjugation reflectivity and the visibility of the fringe patterns were appreciated when the speckle length was increased by decreasing the pupil aperture diameter. This behavior allowed recovering the autocorrelation functions of fringe patterns associated to micro displacements that initially led to decorrelation, and therefore, to improve the dynamic range of the metrological system. Until the best of our knowledge this is the first report about the influence of the speckle size on fiber specklegrams sensors recorded on photorefractive materials by four-wave mixing.     

光学头光束孔径匹配

光学头是光盘存储器的核心部件，光学头光束孔径匹配是光学头设计的一个至关重要的问题。必须合理地确定光源的光束口径与光盘物镜孔径比值，才能保证其光能量耦合效率，并获得较小的光斑尺寸和合理的焦深。本文以衍射光学为基础，详尽地分析了光束孔径匹配对光能耦合效率、光斑尺寸、物镜焦深的影响。     

Use of spatial filtering in imaging through a randomly inhomogeneous medium

The possibility of improving the image quality of a coherently reflecting object, viewed through a randomly inhomogeneous medium, is investigated theoretically. Three cases of coherent illumination of the object by a plane wave are considered: illumination by unperturbed wave, illumination and viewing through different inhomogeneities of a medium, illumination and viewing through the same inhomogeneities. The spatial spectrum of the average intensity is investigated. It is shown that, when the fluctuations of the intensity in the plane of the receiving lens aperture are strong, the use of a suitable spatial filter located in the focal plane of the lens always gives an improvement of the image, but the quality of the image is better when illuminating and receiving optimal systems coincide.     

Improvement of the dynamic range of a fiber specklegram sensor based on volume speckle recording in photorefractive materials

In this work, the improvement of the dynamic range of a micro displacement sensor based on fiber specklegrams holographically stored in a photorefractive BSO (Bi₁₂SiO₂₀) crystal is reported. In our experimental setup, a plastic optical fiber (POF) was used to generate a subjective speckle pattern that was recorded in the crystal using a two-wave mixing arrangement. The speckle size was controlled by modifying the diameter of a pupil aperture adjacent to a lens producing the image of the speckle. Fringe patterns were obtained at the output of the system by producing micro displacements of the fiber output end. An increase in the visibility of the fringe patterns was appreciated when the pupil aperture diameter decreased even without controlling the average modulation of the intensity of the light pattern, i.e. when the speckle length increased and the average light modulation simultaneously decreased. This behavior allowed recovering the autocorrelation functions of fringe patterns associated with displacements that initially led to decorrelation, and therefore, significantly to improve the dynamic range of the metrological system. To the best of our knowledge this is the first report about the influence of speckle size on the dynamic range of fiber specklegrams sensors recorded on photorefractive materials.     

The measurement of slope using shearography

This paper presents an optical method which is based on speckle-shearing interferometry for the measurement of the slope at any point of an object. The object under study is illuminated by an expanded laser beam and its image is recorded on a photographic plate placed at the image plane of an image-shearing camera. A second exposure on the photographic film is made after the light source is moved slightly. The resulting photograph yields a fringe pattern which represents lines of constant displacement gradients. Theory of the method as well as some experimental results are presented.     

去散焦模糊的折反射全向成像系统设计

随着高分辨率传感器和大光圈的采用,光圈和反射面曲率造成的折反射全向成像散焦模糊问题越发突出。提出了一种有效去除散焦模糊的折反射全向成像系统设计。理论分析折反射成像散焦模糊的原因,建立全向图点扩展函数与实景空间物点及成像系统虚像位置的关系;在一次曝光成像时间内匀速旋转镜头对焦环,通过累积曝光使全向图散焦模糊核具有期望的空间不变性;利用反卷积算法对散焦模糊全向图进行复原,得到全局清晰的全向图像。该方法较好地解决了折反射全向成像散焦模糊问题,对提高折反射全向成像质量,促进其在相关领域的广泛应用具有重要意义。     

Velocity contours by speckle photography

We describe a method of generating velocity contours of an object using speckle photography. The object is illuminated by a series of laser pulses following each other at equal intervals. A speckle record of the object is observed in a spatial filtering setup with a small aperture in the frequency plane. A fringe pattern representing a map of velocity contours is obtained in the output plane.     

基于赝热光照明的单发光学散斑成像

散射介质对光的散射是当前限制光学成像深度或距离的一个严重的问题.本文首先数值模拟比较了光透过随机散射介质成像研究中常用的基于光学记忆效应(memory effect, ME)和自相关(autocorrelation, AC)方法的HIOER算法和乒乓(Ping-Pang, PP)算法的优缺点.通过对HIOER算法和PP算法的恢复效果和迭代次数进行比较,发现PP算法在保持较高恢复效果的前提下拥有更快的运行速度.实验中,利用连续HeNe激光器和旋转毛玻璃产生赝热光源,通过物镜对随机散射介质后数毫米距离内的不同形状物体进行了单帧成像,并采用PP算法成功地恢复出微米量级物体的实际图像.这一研究结果将进一步促进ME和AC方法在深层生物组织医学成像研究上的应用.最后,实验研究了不同的物镜和散射介质的间距对成像恢复的放大率、分辨率和图像强度的影响特性,并进行了详细研究.     

Use of spatial filtering in imaging through a randomly inhomogeneous medium

Abstract

The possibility of improving the image quality of a coherently reflecting object, viewed through a randomly inhomogeneous medium, is investigated theoretically. Three cases of coherent illumination of the object by a plane wave are considered: illumination by unperturbed wave, illumination and viewing through different inhomogeneities of a medium, illumination and viewing through the same inhomogeneities. The spatial spectrum of the average intensity is investigated. It is shown that, when the fluctuations of the intensity in the plane of the receiving lens aperture are strong, the use of a suitable spatial filter located in the focal plane of the lens always gives an improvement of the image, but the quality of the image is better when illuminating and receiving optimal systems coincide.