Turbulence-free camera system and related method of image enhancement

摘要

A turbulence-free CCD camera system with nonclassical imaging resolution, for applications in long- distance imaging, such as satellite and aircraft-to-ground based distant imaging, utilizing an intensity- fluctuation correlation measurement of thermal light. The proposed camera system has the following advantages over classic imaging technology: (1) it is turbulence-free; (2) its spatial resolution is mainly determined by the angular diameter of the light source. For example, using sun as the light source, this camera may achieve a spatial resolution of 200 micrometer for any object on Earth. 200-micrometer resolution is insignificant for short distance imaging, however, taking a picture of a target at 10-kilometer, a classic camera must have a lens of 90-meter diameter in order to achieve 200-micrometer resolution. Unlike a classic camera, the proposed turbulence-free CCD camera system has adequate spatial resolution zoom a long distance and still distinguish the objects within a small area, even with a small lens.

主权项

1. A camera system, comprising: a beam splitter receiving thermal light photons from an object or area to be imaged, each such photon passing through the beam splitter to either a CCD camera or a bucket photodetector, wherein the CCD camera passes information to a first Pos-Neg identifier and the bucket photodetector passes information to a second Pos-Neg identifier and each of the first and second Pos-Neg identifiers pass information to a positive-negative fluctuation circuit (PNFC) comprising at least one processor, at least one memory operatively associated with the processor, such memory containing a positive-negative fluctuation protocol algorithm, and wherein the PNFC detects photon coincidence from the intensity fluctuation correlation of the sunlight, and passes the resulting correlation information to an image viewer.