BISPECTRAL IMAGING THROUGH UNKNOWN DETERMINISTIC ABERRATIONS

When the deterministic aberrations are known in an optical system, tra ditional de-blurring methods are effective. However, when the aberrati ons are difficult to quantify, such as telescope aberrations or the ab errations in the human eye, other methods are needed. One potential me thod for de-blurring an image that is formed from a system with unknow n aberrations is the bispectral imaging method. It is a promising way to remove the effects of deterministic aberrations when random aberrat ions are present or artificially introduced into the system. Through c omputer simulations, we have found the optimal amount of random aberra tions to have present in a system containing deterministic aberrations . This amount optimizes the image quality of the reconstruction at hig h light levels using 100 statistically independent aberrated images of the object. Defocus and several third-order aberrations were consider ed in the isoplanatic case. The performance of this method was charact erized by reconstructing a point source and computing its Strehl ratio . These results are currently being used to incorporate the bispectral imaging method as part of a non-invasive technique to reconstruct hig h-resolution images of the back of the eye in human subjects.