Abstract

The operation of a scanning optical correlator is described and demonstrated. The device is shown to combine the advantages of a coherent correlator, which makes preprocessing operations easy to realize, with the advantages of direct-image-casting correlators, which are insensitive to setup misalignment and imperfections and do not require the preparation of any filter. For some applications, these attributes may compensate for the fact that scanning optical systems are inherently slower than parallel, frequency plane processors.

© 1981 Optical Society of America

Real-time optical scanning correlator

F. T. S. Yu and X. J. Lu
Appl. Opt. 23(18) 3109-3116 (1984)

Impact of sampled data on an optical joint transform correlator

D. F. Elliott and I. L. Ayala
Appl. Opt. 20(11) 2011-2016 (1981)

Images of phase edges in conventional and scanning optical microscopes

T. Wilson
Appl. Opt. 20(18) 3238-3244 (1981)

Fabry-Perot filters used for optical preprocessing

G. Indebetouw and S. K. Case
Appl. Opt. 20(9) 1715-1718 (1981)

Large-capacity real-time spatial–spectral scanning optical correlator

F. T. S. Yu and X. J. Lu
Appl. Opt. 25(5) 812-816 (1986)