SPATIAL INFORMATION-PROCESSING AND DISTORTION CORRECTION VIA 4-WAVE MIXING

The versatility of degenerate four-wave mixing (D4WM) has made possible its application to two major areas of spatial information processing: distortion correction and mathematical operations. The first area can be divided into predection and postdetection processing. Distortions can be compensated for before the imaging process by exploiting the phase-conjugating capability of D4WM. Phase-conjugate mirrors (PCM's) may also find use in optical processors designed to remove distortions after the imaging process is complete and the is no longer available. Examples of linear operations that can be implemented using the nonlinear optics of D4WM are image convolution and correlation. An example of a nonlinear mathematical operation that can be implemented using D4WM is edge detection of two-dimensional images.