Improved performance of a hybrid optical/digital imaging system with fast piecewise Wiener deconvolution.

Abstract

We quantitatively investigate how spatially varying deblurring algorithms can improve the imaging performance of hybrid optical/digital systems affected by field aberrations. To this end, we validate a theoretical model of the maximal gain that linear and spatially varying deblurring can bring to any given lens, and derive a practical algorithm to implement this type of deblurring with low computational complexity. The results demonstrate the usefulness to properly coordinate and balance the roles of the imaging optical system and raw image post-processing: optimal final imaging quality can be obtained by a lens that has been optically designed to reduce field aberrations at the price of lower average raw optical quality, associated with a fast and "slightly" spatially varying piecewise Wiener deconvolution algorithm.