Imaging and Sensing in Turbulent Environments

This advanced training focuses on the design and optimization of imaging and sensing systems operating under turbulent or harsh propagation environments, such as atmosphere, underwater, or smoke/dust-laden settings. Turbulence-induced effects such as scattering, beam wander, wavefront distortion, and intensity fluctuations significantly degrade the performance of optical and photonic systems. Participants will learn how to model and mitigate these effects to improve image resolution, signal reliability, and detection accuracy. Topics include adaptive optics, computational imaging, turbulence modeling, statistical optics, and machine learning-enhanced reconstruction techniques. The course includes both theoretical concepts and practical case studies in defense, remote sensing, environmental monitoring, and biomedical imaging.

* Fundamentals of optical turbulence and wave propagation in random media * Atmospheric and underwater turbulence models (e.g., Kolmogorov, Tatarskii) * Impact of turbulence on imaging resolution and sensing accuracy * Adaptive optics and wavefront correction techniques * Speckle reduction, deblurring, and image enhancement methods * Machine learning approaches to turbulence compensation and image recovery * Signal processing for optical sensors in harsh environments * Application-specific case studies: surveillance, biomedical imaging, autonomous systems

* Engineers working in optical imaging, sensing, and remote monitoring * Researchers and developers in defense, environmental, and biomedical fields * Optical system designers needing robustness in real-world deployments * Graduate students in photonics, imaging science, or signal processing