Space-variant Shack–Hartmann wavefront sensing based on affine transformation estimation

Abstract

The space-variant wavefront reconstruction problem inherently exists in deep tissue imaging. In this paper, we propose a framework of Shack–Hartmann wavefront space-variant sensing with extended source illumination. The space-variant wavefront is modeled as a four-dimensional function where two dimensions are in the spatial domain and two are in the Fourier domain with priors that both gently vary. Here, the affine transformation is used to characterize the wavefront space-variant function. Correspondingly, the zonal and modal methods are both escalated to adapt to four-dimensional representation and reconstruction. Experiments and simulations show double to quadruple improvements in space-variant wavefront reconstruction accuracy compared to the conventional space-invariant correlation method.