Interferometric Phase Retrieval in Optical Transient Detection

A transient detection imaging system (TDI), also known as optical novelty filter, is an adaptive interferometric device that detects temporal changes in a scene while suppressing its static parts. Removal of background improves contrast and helps visualizing and measuring intensity and phase. Following the first TDI proposal by Cudney et al. [1] , most TDI systems are based on photorefractive two-wave mixing [2] . Previous works rely on conventional intensity measurements, where partial information about input signal phase changes are obtained by previous calibration using an input phase-output intensity transfer function of the particular system.