Hybrid Image Acquisition and Signal Processing Systems for High Resolution

Abstract : The primary goal of the research was to investigate longitudinal and lateral resolving power of hybrid optical/digital imaging systems. Most loss of resolution is due to aberrations in the lens. The hybrid system modified the optics to be invariant to focus-related aberrations, yielding intermediate images with better lateral resolution. The post processing of the intermediate image resulted in a high-quality, high-resolution image. A matrix method was developed for analyzing imaging systems. A means was found for overcoming the effects of lack of spatial stationarity on hybrid systems. Channel reduction techniques were developed to do more efficient processing of color images. This allows only one channel of a three-color image to be processed, and then the color added back to the image. A new technique was developed for measuring the axial depth of an image that had an error of less than 0.1% of the distance. This was demonstrated to be effective for passive ranging.