Speckle-robust digital adaptive optics for coherent reflective imaging

Imaging with coherent light is often degraded by aberrations from imperfect optics or propagation through random media and by speckle from rough or diffusely reflecting surfaces. Together, aberrations and speckle erase fine detail and reduce image contrast. Existing wavefront-sensing and correction strategies rely on point-like guidestars or interferometric measurements, limiting the practical use of coherent imaging. Here, we introduce and experimentally demonstrate CRISP (Coherent Reflective Imaging with Speckle-robust Phase retrieval)—a digital adaptive optics framework that forms speckle-free, high-resolution images of coherently illuminated diffuse scenes through severe aberrations. CRISP acquires a small set of pupil-modulated, irradiance-only measurements and uses a physics-based computational framework to jointly estimate the aberrated wavefront, the complex field, and the speckle-free image, without point-like guidestars or interferometric measurements. We experimentally validate CRISP in a reflective imaging geometry under strong aberrations and show substantial image refocusing and speckle suppression. These results demonstrate a practical method for aberration- and speckle-robust coherent imaging using minimal hardware with applications in biomedical imaging, industrial inspection and metrology, microscopy of reflective specimens, and imaging through random media.