Image correlation at low light levels: a computer simulation.

The effectiveness of photon-limited image correlation for recognition of realistic imagery is investigated. The correlation signal is obtained by cross correlating a low light-level input scene and a high light-level reference image. The dependence of the probability density function of the correlation signal on the average number of detected photoevents and on the number of gray levels in the images is illustrated. Monte Carlo simulations of image correlation using low light-level scenes are found to be in close agreement with the theoretical predictions.

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