LUCIE ROV mounted laser imaging system

Georges R. Fournier; Deni Bonnier; J. Luc Forand; Paul W. Pace

doi:10.1117/12.140673

31 December 1992 LUCIE ROV-mounted laser imaging system

Georges R. Fournier, Deni Bonnier, J. Luc Forand, Paul W. Pace

Proceedings Volume 1750, Ocean Optics XI; (1992) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.140673
Event: San Diego '92, 1992, San Diego, CA, United States

Abstract

A careful analysis of the scattering and absorption data base of the waters off the coasts of Canada has persuaded us that a laser assisted camera system will have a significantly improved viewing performance over conventional systems. With this purpose in mind, we designed and built the laser underwater camera image enhancer system (LUCIE). The system uses a 2 kHz diode-pumped frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser as an illumination source. The light is collected by a 10 cm diameter zoom lens. The detector is a gated image intensifier with a 7 ns gate and a gain which is continuously variable from 500 to 1,000,000. The gate delay is adjusted to the focal distance of the lens system. This ensures that only the scattering occurring near the target is seen by the camera system. In the strongly scattering waters typical of harbor approaches this system has a range of from 4 to 6 times that of a conventional camera with floodlights. The system has been tested in a water tank facility at DREV and has been mounted on the HYSUB 5000 remotely operated vehicle (ROV) for sea trials. The images from the system are sent to the surface via a high performance analog link with a bandwidth of 8 MHz. The images are processed to remove the effect of marine snow. This processing and the high repetition rate of the laser, which ensures a lack of speckle, both contribute significantly to the clarity of the images. The NEARSCAT transmissometer- nephelometer system is operated simultaneously with the LUCIE system and this allows us to have the fundamental data necessary for evaluating the performance of the imaging system and validating transmission, scattering, and imaging models.

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Georges R. Fournier, Deni Bonnier, J. Luc Forand, and Paul W. Pace "LUCIE ROV-mounted laser imaging system", Proc. SPIE 1750, Ocean Optics XI, (31 December 1992); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.140673

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