Automated computational aberration correction method for broadband interferometric imaging techniques

Numerical correction of optical aberrations provides an inexpensive and simpler alternative to the traditionally used hardware-based adaptive optics techniques. In this Letter, we present an automated computational aberration correction method for broadband interferometric imaging techniques. In the proposed method, the process of aberration correction is modeled as a filtering operation on the aberrant image using a phase filter in the Fourier domain. The phase filter is expressed as a linear combination of Zernike polynomials with unknown coefficients, which are estimated through an iterative optimization scheme based on maximizing an image sharpness metric. The method is validated on both simulated data and experimental data obtained from a tissue phantom, an ex vivo tissue sample, and an in vivo photoreceptor layer of the human retina.