Imaging through a scattering medium by speckle intensity correlations

TL;DR

This paper analyzes an optical imaging method that uses speckle intensity correlations to reconstruct incident fields through strongly scattering media, clarifying its effectiveness and operational conditions in the white-noise paraxial regime.

Contribution

It provides a detailed theoretical analysis of speckle correlation-based imaging, identifying conditions for successful reconstruction in complex scattering environments.

Findings

The method works well when the medium's thickness exceeds the scattering mean free path.

Performance depends on the statistical properties of the speckle pattern.

The analysis is applicable within the white-noise paraxial approximation.

Abstract

In this paper we analyze an imaging technique based on intensity speckle correlations over incident field position proposed in [J. A. Newmann and K. J. Webb, Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 263903 (2014)]. Its purpose is to reconstruct a field incident on a strongly scattering random medium. The thickness of the complex medium is much larger than the scattering mean free path so that the wave emerging from the random section forms an incoherent speckle pattern. Our analysis clarifies the conditions under which the method can give a good reconstruction and characterizes its performance. The analysis is carried out in the white-noise paraxial regime, which is relevant for the applications in optics that motivated the original paper.