Nonredundant Arrays and Postdetection Processing for Aberration Compensation in Incoherent Imaging*

For incoherent imaging systems, wave-front aberrations can have the effect of severely reducing the contrast of high spatial frequencies. Although postdetection image processing can improve image detail, the success of such an approach is limited by image noise. If a simple spatial filter consisting of a nonredundant array of clear openings in an opaque mask is placed in the pupil plane of the system, postdetection image processing yields a restored image superior to that obtainable from a system without the pupil-plane filter. Experimental results confirm the predictions of the theory.