Experimental study on imaging and image restoration of optical sparse aperture systems

Optical sparse-aperture systems can be designed to obtain a high resolution when imaging an astronomical object. These systems are the arrays synthesized by several small filled imaging systems. A principal experiment is set up for an optical sparse-aperture system by which imaging of an extended complex object is achieved. Image restoration of the direct output by the sparse-aperture system is performed by measuring the point-spread functions (PSF) and by using a Weiner filter. The correlation coefficient is proposed as a criterion to determine the optimal parameter and to evaluate the performance of the algorithms. The results show that among the three kinds of configuration models, the Tri-Arm array configuration can produce the highest resolution and largest correlation coefficient value after the restoration. Accordingly, the experimental data, demonstrate that an optical sparse-aperture system can achieve almost the same resolution and image quality as an equivalent filled system.