Influence of nonuniform amplitude on the optical transfer function

The purpose of this work was to develop formulas and accurate numerical techniques for computation of the optical transfer function (OTF) in the general case of unrestricted aberration and with the following different forms of nonuniform real amplitude: (1) when the real amplitude is described by a polynomial, (2) a Gaussian distribution of real amplitude, and (3) a pupil with a central obstruction. The resulting computer program has been carefully tested and used to study the influence of nonuniform amplitude on the OTF in typical cases, for which detailed numerical results are given.