ERC Project iCON

Integrating real-time and post-processing Image Restoration

The iCON project aims at the development of new computational tools for image restoration by real-time feedback control with full images recorded by a CCD camera. The innovation pursued with these new tools is their computational complexity that is linear in the degrees of freedom and/or can be implemented on a distributed array of multi-cores. iCON will enable to break away from the existing quasi-static Adaptive Optics (AO) or off-line phase diversity approaches.

Programme Components

The improvements over these existing image restoration methods are a consequence of three innovative steps taken in this project:

Key enabling technology

The new iCON methodology will enable to consider spatio-temporal feedback on the total imaging plant from the onset of the instrument design cycle. This will lead to finding a better balance between imaging resolution on one hand and size, cost and complexity on the other. Therefore iCON will be a key enabling technology for developing low cost high resolution imaging instruments.

Demonstrators

The new algorithmic developments will be demonstated in 2 state of the art laboratory demonstrators that will be built up in the Smart Optics Laboratory of Prof. Michel Verhaegen. The first demonstrator is a breadboard emulating the large dimensionality of the Adaptive Optics control problem in the European Extreme Large Telescope and the second is about multi-photon microscopy.

Related research projects

Smart light-sheet fluorescence microscopy

Project members

  • Prof. dr. ir. Michel Verahegen
  • Prof. dr. Gleb Vdovine
  • dr. Paolo Pozzi
  • dr. Hieu Thao Nguyen
  • ir. Pieter Piscaer
  • ir. Baptiste Sinquin
  • ir. Dean Wilding

ERC Sponsoring

iCON is sponsored by the Advanced Grant Program of the European Research Council. This funding will bring a core team of 6 temporary researchers together with world wide leading experts for a period of 5 years starting early 2014.