Digital Image Preprocessing for High Speed Active Tracking

ABSTRACT: The Phase~I effort shall comprise basic and applied research in the development of digital preprocessing techniques that improve the performance of tracking algorithms for advanced optical and high energy laser systems.The effort shall include modeling and other test activities to evaluate the benefit of such techniques to advanced beam control and imaging systems.MZA's industry-leading experience in wave-optics modeling, track algorithm development and evaluation, and the application of \ac{DMD} to beam control applications, make it particularly well-suited to perform this research and presents a high probability of obtaining valid and successful results.MZA comes to this effort with a comprehensive background on the subject and existing relevant models that have been anchored to real-world beam control experiments.Therefore, MZA will be able to efficiently concentrate its research on the development and evaluation of the algorithm rather than on model development and basic exploration of the phenomenology.; BENEFIT: A successful Phase I would identify pertinent metrics for determining track image quality through extensive end-to-end wave-optics engagement simulations and image processing analysis.These open and closed-loop metrics will be used to evaluate various track image preprocessing techniques for removing scintillation and speckle effects prior to a conventional correlative based tracker.The products of the proposed research are both a set of image processing techniques for removing higher-order optical disturbances from track imagery as well as a set of open and closed-loop metrics for determining track image quality.The algorithms developed and evaluated through this effort will be used to establish a laboratory or field test program wherein they can be implemented in a real-time system and tested with a variety of track algorithms.As the Phase I effort progresses the best venue for continuing the development and testing of promising algorithms will be established and included in the Phase II proposal.