Effects of image restoration on target acquisition

We focus on modeled atmospheric and image restoration effects on the human acquisition of a target. The image restoration is by filtering atmospheric effects, such as blur caused by absorption, scattering from aerosols, and distortion caused by turbulence that changes the wave front angle, moves the image on the image plane, and blurs it. The restoration method using an atmospheric wiener filter is intended to correct the atmospheric effects. This filter is based on the fact that the modulation transfer function (MTF) of the turbulence is composed of a mean value and a random component while the aerosol MTF changes slowly. The atmospheric wiener filter is more advantageous than an ordinary wiener filter in high turbulence situations. Using the atmospheric wiener filter, we consider the target acquisition limitations of the filter through perception experiments and statistical analysis of the results. We found that the atmospheric wiener filter can noticeably improve target acquisition probability at low noise levels. As the noise increases, however, the improvement becomes more limited because the restoration increases the noise level in the image. (C) 2003 Society of Photo-Optical instrumentation Engineers.