Hough transform based corner detection for laser beam positioning

In laser beam alignment in addition to detecting position, one must also determine the rotation of the beam. This is essential when a commissioning new laser beam for National Ignition Facility located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. When the beam is square, the positions of the corners with respect to one another provides an estimate of the rotation of the beam. This work demonstrates corner detection in the presence or absence of a second order non-uniform illumination caused by a spatial mask. The Hough transform coupled with illumination dependent pre-processing is used to determine the corner points. We show examples from simulated and real NIF images.