Abstract

We recently introduced a variant of the standard optical correlator architecture and algorithm which is quite useful for extracting objects of interest from complicated backgrounds. This new architecture differs from the standard correlator architecture only in the use of a detector element in the center of the Fourier plane. The spatial filtering step in this new architecture is done with a phase-only spatial light modulator, but good phase-only filter design is a bit challenging. We now show that this variant is just one of an infinite family of possible new algorithms and compares the performance of two of them vis-a-vis recognition and discrimination of realistic targets.

© 1988 Optical Society of America