Aberration estimation from single point image in a simulated adaptive optics system

Adaptive optics has been recently applied for the development of ophthalmic devices, with the main objective of obtaining higher resolution images for diagnostic purposes or ideally correcting high-order eye aberrations. The core of every adaptive optics systems is an optical device that is able to modify the wavefront shape of the light entering a system: once the shape of the incoming wavefront has been estimated, by means of this device it is possible to correct the aberrations introduced along the optical path. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the feasibility, although in a simulated system, of estimating and correcting the wavefront shape simply by means of an iterative software analysis of a single point source image, thus avoiding expensive wavefront sensors or the burdensome computation of the PSF of the optical system. To test the proposed algorithm, a simple optical system has been simulated with a ray-tracing software and a program to estimate the Zernike coefficients of the simulated aberration from the analysis of the source image has been developed. Numerical indexes were used to evaluate the capability of the software of correctly estimating the Zernike coefficients. Even if only defocus, astigmatism and coma were considered, the very satisfactory results obtained confirm the soundness of this new approach and encourage further work in this direction, in order to develop a system able to estimate also spherical aberration, tilt and field curvature. An implementation of this aberration estimation in a real AO system is also currently in progress.