Research on signal-to-noise ratio characteristics and image restoration for wavefront coding

Wavefront coding, a technique of optical-digital hybrid image, can be used to extend the depth of the field. However, it sacrifices the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of system at a certain degree, especially on focus situation. The on-focus modulation transfer function (MTF) of wavefront coding system is much lower than that of generally traditional optical system. And the noise will be amplified in the digital image processing. This paper analyzes characteristics of the SNR of the wavefront coding system in the frequency domain and calculates the rate of noise amplification in the digital processing. It also explains the influence of the image detector noise severely reducing the restored quality of images. In order to reduce noise amplification in the process of image restoration, we propose a modified wiener filter which is more suitable for restoration in consideration of noise suppression. The simulation experiment demonstrates that the modified wiener filter, compared with traditional wiener filter, has much better performance for wavefront coding system and the restored images having much higher SNR in the whole depth of the field.