Testing and Analysis of the Structure of Transmitting Media or Objects with Registration of the Field Structure in the Image Plane

A solution to the phase problem in optics is considered within the context of the registration and analysis of the amplitude–phase structure of optical nonuniformities in stationary transmitting media or in investigated objects. To solve the problem, the object or the medium is tested by radiation with a known structure. For a certain selected direction of testing, the structural change due to the interaction with the object is registered. To obtain information on the amplitudes and phases of the testing light field, an original development of the modulation‐spectral method put forward by the authors is used. To solve the problem, the intensity distribution is detected in the image plane both for an unmodulated field and for that subjected to an additional two‐dimensional modulation specially formed in the plane of spatial frequencies. The modulation should provide a visualization of the phase information contained in the light field. The intensity distributions obtained make it possible to determine the two‐dimensional structure of the testing field at the output of the medium or the object. In the proposed variant of the method, the testing field should not be affected in the investigated plane. The interpretation of the results is easier, since it is the image that is registered. The two intensity distributions can be registered simultaneously, provided the light beam is divided into two channels after the optical system. It is significant that the method requires no iteration procedures in solving the problem. This allows one to expect speeding‐up of the processing of the information and analyzing it in almost real time. Two variants of optical schemes are considered in the paper. The first one deals with media or objects with a modulation effect described by multiplication by a complex function characterizing the effect. In the second case, the effect of the object leads to redistribution of the radiation in the investigated plane and is described by the operation of convolution of the testing signal and the function characterizing the effect.