and Computer Engineering at the University of Dayton and holds a
joint appointment in the Department of Electro-Optics and Photonics.
He received the University of Dayton’s top university-wide teaching
award, the 2006 Alumni Award in teaching. He also received the
Rudolf Kingslake Medal and Prize from SPIE in 1998 for the work on
super-resolution. His research interests include a wide range of topics
in digital signal and image processing, medical image processing, and
machine learning.
An extension of the fusion of interpolated frames superresolution (FIF SR) method to perform SR in the presence of atmospheric optical turbulence is presented. The goal of such processing is to improve the performance of imaging systems impacted by turbulence. We provide an optical transfer function analysis that illustrates regimes where significant degradation from both aliasing and turbulence may be present in imaging systems. This analysis demonstrates the potential need for simultaneous SR and turbulence mitigation (TM). While the FIF SR method was not originally proposed to address this joint restoration problem, we believe it is well suited for this task. We propose a variation of the FIF SR method that has a fusion parameter that allows it to transition from traditional diffraction-limited SR to pure TM with no SR as well as a continuum in between. This fusion parameter balances subpixel resolution, needed for SR, with the amount of temporal averaging, needed for TM and noise reduction. In addition, we develop a model of the interpolation blurring that results from the fusion process, as a function of this tuning parameter. The blurring model is then incorporated into the overall degradation model that is addressed in the restoration step of the FIF SR method. This innovation benefits the FIF SR method in all applications. We present a number of experimental results to demonstrate the efficacy of the FIF SR method in different levels of turbulence. Simulated imagery with known ground truth is used for a detailed quantitative analysis. Three real infrared image sequences are also used. Two of these include bar targets that allow for a quantitative resolution enhancement assessment.
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