Improved background oriented schlieren imaging using laser speckle illumination

摘要

A new variant of the background oriented schlieren technique is presented. Using a laser to generate a speckle reference pattern, several shortcomings of the conventional technique can be overcome. The arrangement decouples the achievable sensitivity from the placement constraint on the reference screen, facilitating the design of compact, high-sensitivity configurations. A new dual-pass imaging mode is introduced which further improves system performance and permits focusing on the target scene. Examples are presented that confirm the theoretical predictions.