Since the pioneering contributions of Labeyrie, researchers have made tremendous strides in developing techniques for imaging through turbulent media such as the atmosphere. Imaging through turbid (scattering) media is a more challenging problem. Historically, researchers assumed that scattered light is so chaotic that it carries little or no information. Their approach was to retrieve the weak ballistic (unscattered) signal in the presence of the dominant and confounding scattered signal. In more recent years, researchers have demonstrated focusing light and imaging through thin scattering volumes (diffusers) by actually utilizing the scattered light, illustrating that scattered light also carries information. However, these demonstrations require access to the object plane for inserting detectors, beacons, or a fluorescing agent. We introduce a novel method for imaging through an unknown diffuser with a strictly one-sided observation, wherein the observer has no access to the object plane (for illumination or diffuser characterization) nor does the observer need to label the object with a fluorescing agent. The method requires laser illumination, a digital-holographic data collection, and the use of an image-sharpness criterion to jointly estimate the specific diffuser response and the image that would be obtained by removing the diffuser. Estimation is accomplished with off-line processing after the data are acquired. We demonstrate the method in simulation using a thin diffuser. We also suggest a framework under which the method can be generalized for use with thick diffusers. Our approach shows promise for imaging into human tissue, clouds, fog, smoke, suspended particulates, tree canopy, or other scattering media.
There are many approaches to incoherent imaging through the atmosphere that involve joint estimation of multiple turbulence-induced wavefront-aberration realizations and an object that is common across realizations. These approaches, all of which use short-exposure or “speckle” data, include Multi-Frame Blind Deconvolution (MFBD), Phase-Diverse Speckle (PDS), and Wavelength-Diverse Speckle (WDS). We enumerate fundamental estimation ambiguities that arise within each of these modalities and identify strategies to eliminate some of the ambiguities.
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