Characterization of an acousto-optic tunable filter imaging system

Acousto-optic tunable filters (AOTF's) feature all-electronic, agile, spectral tuning with a narrowband transmission function. They are rugged, solid-state devices with no moving parts. Under computer control, they can produce spectral/spatial image cube data that is ideal for hyper- and multi-spectral imaging applications. However, issues such as spectral leakage, non-uniform response over the image field, and out-of-band scatter need to examined and characterized in order to understand the performance of an AOTF imaging system. We present measurements of the spectral response of a visible AOTF imaging system and discuss the characterization and calibration steps taken to improve the system performance.