Atmospheric turbulence visualization with wide-area motion-blur restoration

A new technique for visualizing the effects of turbulence in clear air and concurrent wide-area motion-blur image restoration is described. Time sequences of images of a scene are captured with an optical telescope covering a comparatively wide field of view. With short-exposure times, atmospheric distortion is frozen to provide a sequence of randomly warped images. Point-by-point registration results in x and y shift maps describing the warp for each image. These maps provide not only a striking visualization of the turbulence but also a means for dewarping each image prior to averaging to form a wide-area motion-blur-corrected result. It is believed that the technique will be of benefit in astronomy, atmospheric physics, and surveillance. (C) 1999 Optical Society of America [S0740-3232(99)00407-X].