Simulated annealing in ocular adaptive optics.

We present what is to our knowledge a first hardware realization of a simulated annealing algorithm in an adaptive optics system designed to image the retina of the human eye. The algorithm is applied to the retinal image itself without the need for wavefront sensors in the system. We find that this optimization algorithm can be an alternative to the traditional Hartmann-Shack sensing. We also compare the simulated annealing algorithm to the stochastic parallel gradient descent algorithm.