Atmospheric-Turbulence-Degraded Astronomical Image Restoration by Minimizing Second-Order Central Moment

Atmospheric turbulence affects imaging systems by virtue of wave propagation through a medium with a nonuniform index of refraction. It can lead to blurring in images acquired from a long distance away. In this letter, it is observed that blurring increases the second-order central moment (SOCM) of images, and we introduce a new parametric blur identification method by minimizing SOCM. The method applies to finite-support images, in which the scene consists of a finite-extent object against a uniformly black, gray, or white background. The SOCM method has been validated by direct comparisons with other methods on simulated and real degraded images.