UTILIZING COMPUTATIONAL IMAGING FOR LASER INTENSITY REDUCTION AT CCD FOCAL PLANES

In this program, Agiltron Incorporated and Wake Forest University jointly propose to develop an innovative optical limiter using a computational imaging system using pupil-phase engineering, which is a nonlinear optimization approach that seeks to determine the best pupil phase distribution that achieves a balance among various competing requirements of high energy spread, high SNR, insensitivity to wavelength, restorability. This method will give us the best chance to achieve laser intensity attenuation while maintaining the restored image quality. We will experimentally demonstrate nanosecond laser pulse protection to CCD camera with cubic phase masks we have. These results will be used to help developing a better restoration technique for cubic phase masks. Two other phase modulation schemes called Piece-Wise Linear Phase Element and Pseudo Random Phase Perturbation will also be tested. A final report will be delivered to the Army to recommend the best technique(s) for laser protection.