Backer in the Infrared Image taken with an infrared camera and pseudocolored.

Brian S. Backer


Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science
54 Lomb Memorial Dr., Rochester NY 14623-5604 USA
Voice: (585) 475-7262, Fax: (585) 475-5988, E-mail: bsb5301@mail.cis.rit.edu

As a doctoral student at the Center for Imaging Science at Rochester Institute of Technology, my research involves testing of area array sensors and is supervised by Dr. Zoran Ninkov who doubles as my thesis advisor.

My dissertation research uses adaptive optics to correct for the image motions of stellar objects. The image of stars seen through the atmosphere are distorted and move randomly in position due to the optical properties of the air (specifically temperature and turbulence). For these reasons, long exposure images are blurry. Two examples of these atmospheric effects are the twinkling of the stars at night and the waiving effects seen near the ground from the heat rising off the pavement on a hot day.

Image Correction
All exposure times are 120s.


As an example of this image correction, a set of three experimentally obtained images are shown above. The left frame is a stationary image captured with a charge injection device (CID). The center frame shows the effect of adding motion during the exposure - the image is smeared. However, in the right image the smearing is nearly eliminated by the use of adaptive optics. The details of the experiment are explained in the publications below.

If anyone has any further questions or comments on my research here at the CIS or any of the publications listed below, please feel free to contact me at any of the above addresses.

Associated Research Activities

Image Processing, Analog Amplifier Design, Astronomy.

Education

Ph.D. Imaging Science, Rochester Institute of Technology, (in progress).

B.S. Electrical Engineering (Mathematics Minor), State University of New York at Buffalo (1991).

Recent Publications

Backer, B., Ninkov, Z., and Cirillo, W., ``First order image correction using a CID array'', SPIE Proceedings, Vol. 2416, in press. (1995).

Ninkov, Z., Backer, B., and Bretz, D., ``Characterization of a Large Format CCD'', SPIE Proceedings, Vol. 1987, pp. 2-12 (1993).

Ninkov, Z., Tang, C., Backer, B., Easton, R., and Carbone, J., ``Charge Injection Devices for use in Astronomy'', SPIE Proceedings, Vol. 2198, pp. 868-876 (1994).