Real-time digital aperture sampling sensor

In real-time speckle imaging and speckle interferometry, there is often the need to remove a nonuniform incoherent background from the detected image to enhance the embedded coherent speckle image. Previous approaches generally require the use of a reference beam which makes the system very sensitive to mechanical instability. A new technique that operates on uncorrelated speckle images obtained by aperture sampling is proposed. The design of a real-time system for digital speckle image processing is described, and the experimental results are presented. Possible applications for the system on speckle interferometry are discussed.