Effects of image restoration on target acquisition

In our work, we will focus on the atmospheric effects on the acquisition of a target and on image restoration by filtering the atmospheric effects such as: blur caused by absorption and scattering from aerosols and distortion caused by turbulence that changes the wave front angle, moves the image on the image plane, and blurs it. The restoration method using an "atmospheric wiener filter" is intended to correct the atmospheric effects. This filter is based on the fact that the modulation transmission function (MTF) of the turbulence is composed of a mean value and a random component while the aerosol MTF changes slowly. The project goal is the realization of the "atmospheric wiener filter", finding the limitations (in terms of blur to noise ratio) of the filter through psycho-physical experiments and statistical analysis of the results. We found that the "atmospheric wiener filter" can improve target acquisition probability at low noise levels. As the noise increases the improvement becomes more limited because the restoration increases the noise level in the image.