Research Interests:
My research focuses on improving images taken through the earth's atmosphere. Currently the images to be improved are images from large diameter telescope. I am starting to work with images taken horizontally through the atmosphere. Both sets of images are severely distorted due to variations of the index of refraction in the atmosphere caused by differential heating of the atmosphere. The two projects I am currently working on are:
- Adaptive Optics
- Adaptive optics (AO) is a method of correcting images in real-time as they are formed. AO systems are closed-loop control systems that measure and correct the images. Most large diameter telescopes today have AO systems. Research for simulating the atmosphere and improving the correction is underway.
- Phase Diversity
- Phase diversity is a new technique for measuring distortion introduced on image by atmospheric turbulence effect. As well, phase diversity can be used as a method to correct the images. The phase diversity instrument and image correction algorithm may replace existing adaptive optics systems in the future. Currently, the processing required for phase diversity is much too large to be done in real time