An adaptive and dynamic lens-flare-free single-pixel imaging method for spacecraft docking

• Published in: Optics and lasers in engineering Vol. 161; p. 107391
• Main Authors: Ni, Mingyang, Cai, Yu, Deng, Huaxia, Gong, Xinglong
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.02.2023
• Subjects: Dynamic tracking; Feature imaging; Lens flare; Ring effect; Single-pixel imaging; Single-pixel imaging; Lens flare; Dynamic tracking; Ring effect; Feature imaging
• ISSN: 0143-8166; 1873-0302
• DOI: 10.1016/j.optlaseng.2022.107391

•An lens-flare-free computational imaging method is proposed.•The data throughput of the proposed method is low.•Video frame-rate imaging is available for the method. Lens flare, the photographic artifact produced by reflecting and scattering a powerful incident light within a camera lens group, can severely degrade image quality and mislead the image-based processing task. Existing solutions typically depend on sophisticated optics design or complex image postprocessing algorithms to reduce lens flare. This paper demonstrates a direct reconstruction of the target feature by single-pixel imaging with a simple optics design and no image postprocessing. A novel sampling strategy is proposed for spacecraft docking, which utilizes Fourier single-pixel imaging methods to capture a specific feature at an ultralow sampling ratio. Simulation and experiments demonstrate that the proposed method can image the feature with a sampling ratio of 4.8% at a video frame rate while almost eliminating the impact of the ring effect. This paper provides a new perspective for achieving lens-flare-free, video-framerate and low-data-throughput imaging in space tasks, which has potential in many imaging-based applications.