Turbulence strength estimation from an arbitrary set of atmospherically degraded images

In remote sensing, atmospheric turbulence and aerosols usually limit the image quality. For many practical cases, turbulence is shown to be dominant, especially for horizontal close-to-earth imaging in hot environments. In a horizontal long-range imaging, it is usually impractical to calculate path-averaged refractive index structure constant C_n² (which characterizes the turbulence strength) with conventional equipment. We propose a method for estimating C_n² from the available atmospherically degraded video sequence by calculating temporal intensity fluctuations in spatially high variance areas. Experimental comparison with C_n² measurements using a scintillometer shows reliable estimation results.