Instability-driven recovery of diffused images

We demonstrate the nonlinear recovery of diffused images in a self-focusing photorefractive medium. The method is based on the convolution property of nonlinearity, in which related modes reinforce each other as they propagate. The resulting mode coupling enables energy transfer from the scattered light to the underlying signal. The dynamics is well described by a model in which the signal seeds a modulation instability in the diffused background.