PixonVision real-time Deblurring Anisoplanaticism Corrector (DAC)
R. G. Hier, Richard C. Puetter · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2007
DigiVision, Inc. and PixonImaging LLC have teamed to develop a real-time Deblurring Anisoplanaticism Corrector (DAC) for the Army. The DAC measures the geometric image warp caused by anisoplanaticism and removes it to rectify and stabilize (dejitter) the incoming image. Each new geometrically corrected image field is combined into a running-average reference image. The image averager employs a higher-order filter that uses temporal bandpass information to help identify true motion of objects and thereby adaptively moderate the contribution of each new pixel to the reference image. This result is then passed to a real-time PixonVision video processor (see paper 6696-04 note, the DAC also first dehazes the incoming video) where additional blur from high-order seeing effects is removed, the image is spatially denoised, and contrast is adjusted in a spatially adaptive manner. We plan to implement the entire algorithm within a few large modern FPGAs on a circuit board for video use. Obvious applications are within the DOD, surveillance and intelligence, security and law enforcement communities. Prototype hardware is scheduled to be available in late 2008. To demonstrate the capabilities of the DAC, we present a software simulation of the algorithm applied to real atmosphere-corrupted video data collected by Sandia Labs.