Joint blind deconvolution and image correlography via a Bayesian image reconstruction algorithm

Laser imaging through atmospheric turbulence is a challenging problem due primarily to turbulence close to the aperture. Amplitude measurements of the return beam in the plane of the aperture are immune to turbulence, but contain limited information about the Fourier phase of the target image. This paper suggests a method for using blind deconvolution of laser speckle degraded imagery together with correlography techniques in order to simplify the phase retrieval problem and produce coherent image reconstructions with spatial resolution not limited by the atmospheric conditions. The viability of the technique is demonstrated via computer simulation