Partially Coherent Optical Processing Of Images

A relationship between spatial coherence and the source intensity distribution is presented. Since the spatial coherence is dependent upon the image processing operation, a reduced spatial coherence may be used for the processing operation. The advantage of the source encoding is in the relaxation of the constraint of the coherence requirement, enabling the processing operation to be carried out using an extended incoherent source. The constraint of the temperal coherence requirement for partially coherent processing is discussed. Experimental demonstrations for image deblurring and image subtraction are also provided.