Iterative technique for the synthesis of distortion-invariant optical correlation filters.

A procedure is presented for designing distortion-invariant correlation filters. Optical correlation filters designed using this technique retain full position invariance. The filter design begins by finding the distortion-invariant modes (eigenfunctions) for a particular image. The input image, filter, and correlation response are all spectrally expanded in terms of these orthogonal eigenfunctions. An iterative technique between the spatial domain and the spectral domain is used to rephase the invariant modes so that a filter composed of a linear combination of modes has the proper overall invariance. The iterative technique also controls the information content of the filter by maintaining specified amplitudes for each invariant mode in the filter. Targets are detected by spanning the filter to determine points of constant amplitude.