Patent ID: 7457545

Claim:
A process in an adaptive optic (AO) system employing a Hartmann wavefront sensor (WFS) to measure a wavefront, and a deformable mirror (DM) for correcting said wavefront, wherein said WFS (I) stores a reference wavefront represented as a set of reference spot positions, and (II) employs a sub-process for controlling the operation of said WFS and adaptively defining each said reference spot position as the center of a subaperture region on said WFS, and wherein said sub-process further includes a fast control loop and first and second slow control loops, and comprises the sequence of: (a) before entering said fast control loop, initializing said sub-process; (b) setting the reference spot positions that represent the reference wavefront of the WFS to initial values, (c) setting the subaperture regions to initial values; (d) entering the fast control loop, capturing a frame of image data from the wavefront containing Hartmann spot images; (e) estimating the position of said Hartmann spot images; (f) subtracting the reference spot positions from the Hartmann spot images so as to determine the displacement of the said Hartmann spot images from said reference spot positions; (g) reconstructing the wavefront by integrating gradient values among said subaperture regions; (h) one of providing and updating drive signals sent to the deformable mirror (DM) within said AO system; (i) at the end of the fast control loop, calculating a system performance metric; and (j) determining whether or not to terminate said fast control loop, wherein if said fast control loop is not to be terminated, the sub-process returns to the step (d).