Development of a dual-path system for band-to-band registration of an acousto-optic tunable filter-based imaging spectrometer

Accurate band-to-band registration is crucial when an acousto-optic tunable filter (AOTF)-based imaging spectrometer is used to acquire spectral data on an unstable platform. However, it is difficult to registrate hyperspectral images accurately using traditional image registration algorithms, which will seriously affect the accurate acquisition of spectra and reduce the classification accuracy. Here we demonstrate an optical configuration that acquires the diffracted and undiffracted beam of the AOTF simultaneously. These two beams have identical geometrical optical characteristic and suffer from the same image motion caused by the platform jitter. Compared with the diffracted beam, however, the intensity of the undiffracted beam is changeless when tuning the AOTF. Therefore, the use of undiffracted beams allows accurate measurement of image motion in different bands. The experiment shows that this technique greatly improves the registration accuracy of spectral images with poor correlation and low SNR.