Practical concerns for phase diversity implementation in wavefront sensing and image recovery

In this paper, we present the results of the phase diversity algorithm applied to simulated and laboratory data. We show that the exact amount of defocus distance does not need to be known exactly for phase diversity algorithm. We determine, through simulation, the optimum diversity distance. We compare the aberrations recovered with the phase diversity algorithm and those measured with a Fizeau interferometer using a HeNe laser. The two aberration sets agree with a Strehl of over 0.9. The contrast of the recovered object is found to be 10 times that of the raw image.