Patent ID: 7773172

Claim:
A method for selectively attenuating narrowband high intensity bright sources from an incoming light source in an imaging system creating a focal plane array, the method comprising: receiving and conditioning incoming light in a first group of conditioning optics; receiving conditioned light from the first group of optics into a tiltable line attenuation tunable optical rejection filter (LATOF), wherein the LATOF creates a rejection band which selectively attenuates a narrowband of bright source from the conditioned light; tilting the LATOF at least one increment to tune the rejection band along a wavelength domain; receiving the conditioned and selectively attenuated light from the LATOF into an opto-electronic detector; and converting the conditioned and selectively attenuated light into an output for an electronic image, wherein saturation of the focal plane array decreases and contrast is restored in the electronic image; and tilting the LATOF such that unattenuated light from the high intensity bright sources, and the conditioned light, are simultaneously received by the detector.