Improving the accuracy of a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor on extended scenes

In order to achieve higher resolutions, current earth-observation satellites use larger lightweight main mirrors which are usually deformed over time, impacting on image quality. In the context of active optics, we studied the problem of correcting this main mirror by performing wavefront estimation in a closed loop environment. To this end, a Shack-Hartman wavefront sensor (SHWFS) used on extended scenes could measure the incoming wavefront. The performance of the SHWFS on extended scenes depends entirely on the accuracy of the shift estimation algorithm employed, which should be fast enough to be executed on-board. In this paper we specifically deal with the problem of fast accurate shift estimation in this context. We propose a new algorithm, based on the global optical flow method, that estimates the shifts in linear time. In our experiments, our method proved to be more accurate and stable, as well as less sensitive to noise than all current state-of-the-art methods. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.