Lucky averaging: quality improvement of adaptive optics scanning laser ophthalmoscope images.

Adaptive optics (AO) has greatly improved retinal image resolution. However, even with AO, temporal and spatial variations in image quality still occur due to wavefront fluctuations, intraframe focus shifts, and other factors. As a result, aligning and averaging images can produce a mean image that has lower resolution or contrast than the best images within a sequence. To address this, we propose an image postprocessing scheme called "lucky averaging," analogous to lucky imaging [J. Opt. Soc. Am. 68, 1651 (1978)] based on computing the best local contrast over time. Results from eye data demonstrate improvements in image quality.