On modeling the focus blur in image restoration

The point spread function (PSF) of a defocused lens, in the continuous spatial coordinates, can be modeled using the principles of either geometrical optics or physical optics. The authors compare the PSFs and the corresponding optical transfer functions obtained on the basis of these two models under different amounts of blurs and different imaging sensor resolutions, in the discrete spatial domain. Different approximations for the discretization of the PSF are considered. The effect of using geometrical versus physical optics-based models on the quality of restored images is investigated experimentally in the case of images recorded by a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera.<<ETX>>