Abstract

Recently, we described a nonlinear joint transform processor for image deconvolution.¹ In this technique, both the smeared image and the smearing function are displayed side by side at the input plane of the optical processor. The Fourier phase appearing in the joint power spectrum is the exact Fourier phase of the original image. In the technique described in Ref. ¹, a hard clipping nonlinearity is used to threshold the joint Fourier spectrum to only two values, 1 and –1. The effect of the nonlinearity is to remove the distorted amplitude entirely and to restore the correct phase of the original signal. An amplitude mask averaged over an ensemble of images is used at the Fourier plane to provide the amplitude spectrum. An inverse Fourier transform of the average amplitude spectrum with the recovered correct phase information can yield the original image with considerably reduced distortion.

© 1989 Optical Society of America